Ondine
by KateRayearth
Summary: A girl with red hair and sea eyes wakes up on a beach with no memory of who she is or how she got there. A young fisherman named Ash finds her. (Pokeshipping AU)
1. Chapter 1

(A/N: this is a translation of something I originally wrote in Italian. It was supposed to be a oneshot, but an outrageously long one, so I'll be splitting it into a few shorter chapters. The lyrics quoted through the text are from the song "Colleen" by Joanna Newsom, which was one inspiration for the story.)

**Ondine**

**1.**

_I'll tell it as I best know how, and that's the way it was told to me:_  
_I must have been once a thief or a whore, then surely was thrown overboard_  
_where, they say, I came this way from the deep blue sea_

_it picked me up and tossed me 'round, I lost my shoes and tore my gown_  
_I forgot my name and drowned; then woke up with the surf a-pounding:_  
_it seemed I had been run aground._

_—-_

The first thing she feels, when she wakes up, is waves. It's a familiar sound, a familiar whisper, and so she feels calmer listening to it, because that sound tells her she's safe and nothing else matters. But after not long it feels as if something is wrong, like an off-key note, and even if she can't understand what her heartbeat hastens a little and breath races a bit in her chest. She's known the sound of the sea her whole life, or so she thinks, but now it's different.

The second thing is cold. That too feels both familiar and foreign: she's certainly been cold before, but the wind on her skin is new and strange. It rolls down her back like an icy caress and she shivers, shutting her eyes tighter.

She dares to open them a few moments later. She blinks a couple times and recognizes the sand, gray and even. She feels it coarse against her cheek, annoying. A hand is resting near her face. She tries moving her fingers and her fingers do move, curling against her palm. She looks at them as if they were some sort of wonder.

Everything is the same still, cold and sand and the sound of the waves so strange and unknown, and she tries propping herself up on her arms a little. The sea is a pale blue stripe crashing quietly against the beach, leaving white splashes of seafoam behind. Looking at it makes her head turn and her stomach crumple, as if she were upside down or the perspective was all wrong, and all of a sudden it occurs to her that she should know how she ended up there or where she came from. When she tries searching her mind for an answer she finds it empty. She can only go back to the moment she woke up, with her face in the sand and the sound of the sea in her ears; there's nothing before that.

Seafoam splashes on her bare feet. She keeps staring at the sea, frowning, listening to the waves and the faraway screeching of seagulls. For a second it feels as if something is about to resurface from the muted shimmering of the sun on the water, like the memory of a dream, but it disappears again before she can grasp it.

"Hey! Are you alright?"

The barging in of a voice in the quiet surrounding her is sudden enough to startle her and send her heart hammering in her temples. She pulls back instinctively, curling up as if she could hide, and she turns to peek through the strands of red hair that the wind blew on her face. She makes out a pair of feet in a pair of heavy boots, tucked up trousers. She lowers her head again, hiding her face in her hands.

"Hey, I don't…" he starts, then stops; between her fingers she sees him crouch. "I don't want to hurt you."

His voice sounds sincere, and she slowly dares to look up again. In front of her is a boy with a messy tangle of black hair and a curious look on his face, that she sees light up a bit when their eyes meet. "Are you alright?" he asks again. "What happened? Did you fall into the sea?"

She silently repeats his words to herself, struggling a little to understand their meaning. They sound strange, as if she had not heard another voice in a very long time. She parts her lips to answer and then stops, not knowing what or how. I woke up here, I can't remember anything else; it's clear in her mind, but it muddles when she tries to translate it into sound and syllables. She gives up and looks down, biting her lip. She tries to sit up and he says "hey" again and quickly looks away, his cheeks flushing red. She looks at herself to realize she's not wearing clothes. She should, she thinks, even if she doesn't quite know why, and instinctively she presses her arms to her body, covering her breasts.

He takes off the cape he's wearing, still not looking, and hands it to her with his eyes glued to the ground. "Here, put this on," he stutters, embarrassed. She hesitates for a moment, then takes it and wraps it tightly around herself. The cloth is warm and she realizes she's trembling, and she curls up a little more, clutching the hem of the cape to keep it from falling.

The boy cautiously looks up again, and cracks a relieved smile. "That's better," he comments, with a clumsy laugh. The lines of his face are sweet, almost like a child's. She wonders if she should be scared of him and decides that she shouldn't. She doesn't think he will hurt her.

"Are you a foreigner maybe?" he asks, frowning. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

She nods, but she still isn't sure how to answer and so she doesn't, looking down again. "Oh, well then," he smiles, apparently not bothered by her silence. "I thought I'd have to sign or something! Come, I'll take you to the village. You need clothes and to warm yourself up."

He offers his hand and she stares at it, doubtful. "Come on, I'm not going to hurt you," he laughs. It's a pleasant sound. She takes his hand, holding the cape with the other, and he gently pulls her up.

Her legs are strange, they barely hold her and they feel wobbly when she unbends her knees, as if they were not used to holding the weight of her body; she looks at her feet, so far away, and her head spins. She staggers and he catches her before she can fall, holding her by the waist.

"Are you alright?" he asks, alarmed. "You're not hurt, right?"

She shakes her head even if she's not sure she's alright. The empty space around her feels destabilizing; it feels too much. She feels like she's falling even now that she's steadier on her legs. She grabs his shoulder on impulse.

"Don't worry," he reassures her. His arm is still around her waists, barely touching her, and she dares to loosen her fingers and let go. It's better after a couple steps. Her knees quiver a little, she has to focus to make them work; she pictures the muscles and bones moving under her skin like laborious, complicated machinery. The sand holds the prints of her bare feets and his boots. She turns to look at them; a wave wipes some away.

"I'm Ash, anyway," he says. He smiles. She tries smiling back and he gives her a curious look, obviously expecting an answer. "What's your name?" he asks, when she says nothing.

She can't answer, she doesn't know; she didn't have a name when she woke on the sand. She looks down, wrapping her arms tight around her body.

Ash lets a couple moments pass, then starts talking again: "You'll like the village, everyone's nice. And it's not always so cold! Only this season, but it doesn't last long, only a couple months. It's a lot nicer in the summer, even if you can't really tell right now, hehe. If you'll still be here you'll see for yourself."

She listens, and catches herself smiling again. His hand is resting on her back, almost distractedly, gently guiding her. His face looks serene and cheerful. She thinks he would catch her if her legs were to suddenly stop working, and she feels calm, without really knowing why. The empty space around her unsettles her and makes her feel lost, but his hand on her back is an anchor.

The wind blows her hair in her face. She tries to tidy it with her hand, adjusting it behind her ear.

"It's not far," he's saying. "You should be able to see it from here". He stands on tiptoes to make sure, straightening his neck. He's about as tall as her, maybe, maybe a bit less. "Yeah, there, look," he cries out, pointing at something ahead of them. "You can see a few houses."

She follows his arm with her eyes and sees the slightly-clouded shapes of a few buildings, a group of houses crammed on one another on top of a cliff where the beach ends. Ash says "come" and starts walking again guiding her with him. She feels a different surface under her feet now: when she looks down she sees clumps of pale green grass sprouting from the sand. She suddenly turns back, inexplicably anxious: the sea is farther now, a slimmer stripe. Something in her chest aches.

Ash notices. "Are you alright? What's wrong?" he asks, and she shakes her head, her breath stuck in her throat, to tell him she doesn't know. He places his arm around her back again, as if fearing that she might fall. "Did you see something?"

She shakes her head again. He gives her a dubious look, then shrugs. "Come, then. We're almost there, there's a path."

She follows, but it takes her a while to look away from the sea, and her legs are trembling harder now. After a few steps she turns back again. The sea is farther still.

"What's wrong?" Ash insists. She forces herself to stop looking and turn her eyes to the ground even if her heart is pounding. It hammers in her ears, drowning out even the sound of the waves. Ash tightens his arm around her waist and she leans on him a little, feeling weaker than before. He doesn't let her go. He turns to see what she's looking at, squinting at the shore. After a couple moments he shrugs. "There's nothing," he says, puzzled. She shivers and wraps her arms tight around herself, and she doesn't know how to make him understand that what's unsettling her isn't anything concrete: she feels the sea's absence like a rip, growing larger and more painful with every step.

Ash hesitates a bit longer, then looks at her. "There's nothing to worry about, alright?" he assures her. She nods and he smiles. "You'll see, you'll feel better once you've rested and put something warm on yourself. Oh, and you'll have to eat something, for sure, who knows what you've been through before you ended up here! Come."

He holds out a hand and she closes hers around it, slowly. Ash smiles again.

"Maybe you were on a ship that sank?" he tries to guess as they walk. She looks at her feet. He looks at her curiously: "No?" he tries again, and then, when she still doesn't answer: "You don't remember?"

She looks up and nods. He frowns a little. "Oh," he says, surprised. Then shrugs. "You'll remember, don't worry. If your ship really sank you're lucky to be alive. The sea is dangerous."

He's serious as he says that. He looks ahead and tightens his lips in a thin line. When he notices she's looking though he quickly folds them back into a smile.

She can see the village better now. The buildings are small, made of stone and wood; here and there threads of smoke spring from the chimneys. She hears voices, too, and she wonders if from the village she'll be able to hear the sea. Maybe she will.

Ash guides her along a dirt path. She stumbles a little to follow; his cape keeps trying to slip away even if she holds it tight and she keeps tripping on the edge. She's starting to really tremble, now, too; the wind lashes at her bare shoulders and the ground is cold under her bare feet. The wind also brings more voices from the streets and she slows down, nervous. Ash finds himself tugging at her hand. He stops, turning to look at her.

"This path doesn't lead to the main street," he says, guessing her thoughts. "There won't be many people. Don't worry."

He's right, even if she keeps falling behind and stopping and being startled by everything. The village is both loud and quiet. The noises bounce from wall to wall, muted: the racket of the wheels of a cart, the hee-haws of some animal, someone calling "fresh fish, ladies, just out of the sea!". Colorful cloths hang from a thread, swelling in the wind like flags or sails. She looks in astonishment, her nose up in the air, and Ash laughs and gently tugs at her hand. "It's just laundry," he says, making her turn to a narrow alley between two houses; "Come". She nods and hurries a little. She closes her eyes for a moment, without stopping: she can still hear the waves, however faint.

The rectangle of sky between roofs, the ground paved in round stones making it harder to walk, the terrible screeching of a flock of seagulls gliding above them, the stone arch they walk through, ending up in a small round space; the effort to take note of so many details at a time makes her head spin. Somewhere behind them there's a sudden clack, maybe a window opening, and she jumps and clings to his arm. The fish-seller keeps shouting, closer: come, ladies, come quick! All around are female voices. Ash tightens his hand around hers.

He stops after another turn. In front of them is a small patch of land, dark and mostly barren; at its center a woman is crouching to water a row of green springs, brown hair tied behind her head with a ribbon.

She holds her breath at the bottom of her chest and stops, pulling Ash's cape tighter around herself. He waves an arm in the air to call: "Mother!", and the woman turns back, surprised. She notices her after a moment. She blinks, then sets the bucket down and stands, quickly dusting some dirt from her dress, and heads fast towards them. Instinctively she takes half a step back.

Ash turns to her. "Don't worry," he tries to reassure her. "It's my mother. There's nothing to fear."

The woman reaches them. "What…?" she starts, and she feels her eyes staring and quickly lowers hers, sinking her teeth into her lip. "Honey, what happened? Who's this girl?"

"I don't know, I found her on the beach," Ash says. "She must have survived a shipwreck or something, I think."

"Oh, goodness," the woman cries out. She draws closes and places a hand on her cheek, and she jumps a little and then relaxes: her touch is gentle, warm. "Don't worry, dear. You're safe here, don't be scared."

Her voice is gentle too, like a pleasant vibration on her skin. She dares to look up and the woman smiles, stroking her cheek. Her smile resembles Ash's. "I'm Delia," she says. She nods her head towards him: "And he's my son, Ash, but I suppose you're already acquainted with him."

She nods, cracking the tiniest smile. Delia answers with a beaming one and places her hands on her shoulders, rubbing them a little to warm her up. "We need to find you clothes. Maybe there's something of mine that can fit you. They'll be a little big… I can fix a couple of them for you, it won't take long, but at least you'll be warm in the meantime. Come."

She begins to lead them somewhere, then stops and turns back. "Ash, honey, shouldn't you be down at the harbor? Brock is probably waiting for you."

He puffs his cheeks. "Yeah, but…"

"I'll take care of this," his mother gently assures him. "Go, don't make him wait any longer."

"Alright," he gives up. He turns to look at her and waves a small goodbye. "I have to go, see you later!" he says, and suddenly she feels a little lost again and holds her hand up in the air as if to grab his arm and stop him. He lingers for a moment, frowning a bit, then smiles. "You're in good hands, don't worry! You'll be fine," he promises. "I really have to go. I'll see you when I come back!"

He turns and runs away. She tries to whisper a "thank you", but it comes out in a breath so small that Ash doesn't hear her and doesn't stop. She almost doesn't hear it herself. He's gone before she can try again, and she keeps looking in that direction for a few seconds before lowering her eyes.

Delia keeps her hands on her shoulders and stoops down a little, to be at her height. "So, dear, what happened?" she asks.

She hesitates, looking down still, then parts her lips and tries speaking again: "I can't remember," she whispers. Her voice is strange, hoarse, like she forgot how to use it. It sounds also new, as if it weren't the same voice she had before, or maybe the same, but different somehow. "I can't remember anything."

Delia frowns a little, then smiles again. "We'll think about it later," she says. She still hears the sea, far away. "Now let's find something for you to wear. Come with me."

—-

She feels uneasy in the clothes Delia found for her. The too-long skirt hampers her, the corset makes it harder to breathe, the shoes are heavy on her feet: it feels as if she's balancing on a thread, away from the ground. The cloth weighs on her skin, annoying more than pleasant and warm.

Delia brushes her hair, tidying it. It's shoulder-length and straight, a bright orange. "You have beautiful hair," she comments gently. She stops and walks around her, placing a hand on her face to make her look up. "And beautiful eyes."

She smiles a little, embarrassed, looking back at the floor. Delia sets the brush down.

"I don't even know your name," she says, and she clasps the cloth of her skirt in her fists.

"I don't know," she whispers. The sound of her voice surprises her again, like she never heard it before. "I can't remember."

"You don't remember anything at all?" Delia marvels. When she doesn't answer she gently places her hands on her cheeks. "I'm sure it's just a matter of time," she tells her. With a caress she rearranges a rebel strand of hair that keeps falling on her forehead. "You'll remember everything. God only knows what you've been through. Maybe it's for the best that you don't remember it now."

"I woke up on the beach," she says. "Ash found me and brought me here. It's all I know."

"It's enough for now," Delia assures her. "Let's take care of you first. Are you hungry?"

She blinks, a bit surprised, because she hadn't been thinking about it but now her stomach suddenly cramps up. "Maybe," she admits. "A little."

Delia smiles. "Come," she says, and guides her from the bedroom to the kitchen. The house is small, with rooms barely big enough to move, but it feels welcoming and it smell good. She breathes in slowly, filling her chest: it's the smell of a home, she thinks, even if she doesn't remember any home of her own. The kitchen is tiny and bright, full of the quiet grumbling of a pot on the stove. Delia nods towards the table and says "sit", hurrying to place a bowl and a spoon in front of her.

"You're very kind," she tells her. She sits, careful not to step on her skirt or crease it under the legs of her chair. The woman answers with a smile, then turns to busy herself around the pot: she stirs whatever is inside with a wooden spoon, tastes some with a focused frown, adds a pinch of something from a jar. The smell coming from it makes her stomach twist harder.

She looks around as she waits. The kitchen is both tidy and in a chaos: pots, bowls and jars full of spices or who-knows-whats fill every available surface. The light coming from the window draws pale rectangles on the wood of the table. Dust seems to dance in the gleam, and she tries to touch it, and is surprised to find that she can't.

"You can stay, if you want," Delia says, distracting her and startling her a little. "I suppose you have nowhere else to go". She takes her bowl to fill it and places it back in front of her. "Here."

"I don't want to cause you trouble," she replies. She grasps the spoon and looks at it for a moment, not quite sure what to do with it at first.

"It would be no trouble at all," Delia assures her. "When Ash is out at sea I'm always alone. Having some company would be nice."

"You really are very kind," she repeats. She tries the soup in her bowl. "And this tastes very good."

"I'm happy you think so," the woman smiles. She walks back to the stove as she keeps eating. After a while she turns and looks at her for a handful of seconds: "You need a name," she says.

She looks up. "Huh?"

"If you're going to stay here, you'll need a name. Until you remember yours, I mean". She thinks about it for a moment, raising a finger to her lips. Then her eyes light up: "How about Ondine? Ondines are water creatures… you came from the sea, and your eyes have its color. Do you like it?"

"It's a beautiful name," she comments, smiling. She finishes her soup and sets the spoon down in the bowl. She feels better, now. "I'm really thankful for what you're doing for me."

"No need to thank me," the woman says. "Do you want some more?"

Ondine, repeating her new name to herself, shakes her head. "I'm good, thank you," she assures her. She looks down briefly, tightening a hand around the edge of the table. "I'd like to thank Ash too. If he hadn't found me I'd probably still be on the beach. Do you know where I could find him?"

"He's probably out at sea now," Delia tells her. "He'll be back in a few hours. I can take you to the harbor, if you want to wait for him there."

"I'd like that," she nods. "If— if you don't mind."

"I don't mind". Delia leaves her bowl and her spoon in the sink, then walks to the door, smiling still. "Come."


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

_well they took me in and shod my feet, and taught me prayers for chastity_  
_and said my name would be Colleen_  
_and I was blessed among all women, to have forgotten everything._

—-

When Delia turns back to leave, after making sure that she'll be fine alone, she sits on the sand and hugs her knees. Delia left her Ash's cape so that she can give it back. She keeps it folded on her legs, not to dirty it.

The sea is calm and flat, a gray-blue surface only barely creased by the waves; white foam sprays a little around the rocks. She follows the line of the horizon with her eyes and tries to push her glance even farther, as if she could make out something on the other side and remember that it's there she comes from; but beyond the horizon she sees nothing.

She shivers a little and pulls her legs closer to her chest, adjusting her skirt to cover her feet. Ondine, she thinks, trying to get used to the sound. It doesn't feel like a real name, even less hers: there's no space for it inside her, it weighs on her like her clothes. She tries saying it out loud and it sounds ever more unknown and strange, a word in another language, coming from someone who's not her.

She looks at the boats docked on the beach and the darker stripe of sand along the shore. More boats, out at sea, are dark small spots barely moving. She closes her eyes and waits, listening to the sound of the waves: she feels it vibrate in her chest like a heartbeat or a breath, more hers than any word or name. After a while it's almost as if she could make out the notes of a song, muffled and barely there. She follows them in silence, with her mind, and she feels protected.

She opens her eyes and the feeling of safety disappears. The empty space all around keeps troubling her. If she looks at it for too long she feels like she's falling, as if she were balancing on the edge of a cliff rather than sitting on the ground. She swallows and looks back at the sea: one of the boats is heading back to the shore. She stands and rises on tiptoes to see better, but it's still too far to make out something. She hesitates, clutching the cloth of Ash's cape in her hands.

On board are two men; when they get closer to the beach one of them notices her and observes her curiously. He says something to the other and both turn to look at her again. Nervous, she steps away until her back is to the rocks, and from there she watches them row to the shore and push the boat on the beach.

The two seem to forget about her quickly. They busy themselves around the boat, fold their nets, unload baskets that shine silvery on the inside, filled with fish. She sits down again, trying to become invisible. The men's voice disrupt the quiet like off-key notes. The wind brings them muted to her ears.

When they leave she lets out a breath and adjusts herself better against the rock. She rest a temple on them and it's almost as if she could feel them vibrate, following the pulse of the waves, and she closes her eyes again, synchronizing her breath on the same melody.

She's still listening to the sea when Ash's boat heads back to shore, later. She sees it and stands, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. Ash isn't alone; there's an older boy with him, with brown hair and darker skin. When they're close to the shore Ash drops the oars and jumps out of the boat to push it. He notices her then, and waves an arm above his head, calling out "hey!" with a bright smile. She waves back, a little unsure.

She walks closer as Ash and the other boy push the boat to the beach. He's bare-footed, his trousers tucked up to his knees to keep them from getting wet; his footprints and the furrow left by the keel of the boat disappear after only a few moments, swallowed by the waves.

He smiles again as she reaches them. "Hey!" he repeats. She smiles back.

"Hi," she says, slowly.

"You can speak, then!" he lights up. "What are you doing here?"

"I was waiting for you," she answers. She hesitates, then adds: "I wanted to thank you."

He shrugs. "For what?" he says. The other boy looks at her, then at Ash.

"Is this the girl you found?"

"Yeah," he answers, stooping to rearrange the nets. The other walks around the boat to reach her, and when she offers her hand instead of shaking it he takes it and lays a kiss on her knuckles, with a half bow. "Pleasure to meet you, fair maiden. I'm Brock, and you're enchanting."

"Don't worry, he does that with every girl," Ash laughs. She folds her lips in an amused and slightly bewildered smile.

"I'm Ondine," she says, using her new name for the first time.

Ash looks up. "Ondine?" he repeats, as Brock smiles, bows again and then turns back to the boat; and she looks down, biting her lip.

"It's— it's not my real name," she whispers. "Your mother gave it to me. I can't remember mine."

"You'll remember," Ash assures her. "Ondine is a nice name, anyway."

She cracks a smile. She looks at the boat: the baskets only hold a few fishes, with silvery backs and light bellies.

"Are you fishermen?"

Ash nods, unloading one of the baskets. "Yeah."

"You didn't catch much."

"You never catch much," he sighs, then shrugs: "We'll have to make do with it."

Ondine walks closer, handing him his cape. "This is yours."

He looks up, surprised, and smiles. "You can keep it, I don't need it now," he says. She hesitates for a moments, then unfolds it and wraps it around her shoulders. Wind blows it up for a moment.

"Where are you going to go?" Ash asks curiously. He puts his boots back on. "I mean, where are you going to stay until your memory comes back?"

"Your mother said I could stay at your house," she answers. "Of course, if— if you don't mind."

"Yeah of course, why would I mind?" he says, frowning briefly. "You'll like it. My mother is an amazing cook". He bends over to pick up the baskets, and as he straightens his back again he looks at her: his eyes are brown, a warm and intense shade. He smiles: "We're bringing these to the marketplace. Wanna come?"

She nods. Ash smiles even brighter and says "let's go then", and she follows, lifting her dress a little not to trip on the hem.

—-

She can't sleep in the bed Delia arranged for her. She tosses and turns in her blankets feeling trapped, her heart racing too fast in her chest. She can't see the walls in the dark, but she still feels them all around her like a cage. She's afraid they might crumble and smother her and she lies stiff, eyes wide open and ears alert.

She can hear the sea, even if just a little, because the windows are closed. She clings to the rolling of the waves as if she could dig her fingers into it and hold it tight, like an anchor. It's strange: the sturdy, strong stone walls scare her, but the sea, unfathomable and ever-changing, makes her feel safe. Her mind feels a little like the sea. She closes her eyes and for a moment it seems that something is about to resurface, but it's gone again before she can recognize it, swept away by the waves. The surface is her lying on the sand and Ash asking if she's alright, Delia choosing a name for her, the crowd and the colors of the market and the strong smells of spices and fish. The sun shines on it too strongly, blinding her and keeping her from seeing what lies below.

The sound of the sea is a song, a familiar melody in a language she knows or used to know. Eyes closed, she lets it rock her, lets it become strong enough to drown out everything else. On the beach the waves brush her bare feet, she left her shoes far from the shore. She takes off her dress and lets it fall, unlaces her corset. The water swallows them; rises in splashes around her waists. As she dives she becomes part of the song: the sea dissolves her, unravels the outline of her body. Loosens her muscles, slides into her veins, pulsates in her chest in place of her heart. Her body is on the shore like an empty shell, the moon draws iridescent reflections on her skin. She has no skin down here, no clothes, no name. She doesn't need them. She forgot them as if they were nothing but a dream.

When she opens her eyes she makes out the wooden roof boards above her head. A hint of pale white light seeps from the window. She stares at the ceiling for a handful of moments, dazed, then sits up and pushes her blankets away. Inside Delia's nightgown, too big for her, her body is still tangible and solid. She feels the bones under her skin. She isn't made of the sea; she's made of flesh, nerves, muscles. She tries to remember her dream and she can't, it disappears at the bottom of her mind before she can recognize it. It left a feeling behind, though, and it takes her breath away, fills her with something she doesn't know how to call.

It must be nearly dawn. She hugs her knees, pulling the blanket over her feet, and waits for the sun to rise.

—-

"Did you remember anything?"

Ondine looks away from the window—she can't see the sea, from there, just more houses—and shakes her head, wincing a little. "Not yet."

"It happens sometimes, to lose your memory at sea," Ash says. He's holding the baskets for the fish, slightly off-balance. "I'm going down at the harbor, wanna come?"

"Alright," she nods. Ash smiles and opens the door, holding the baskets with only one hand; the pile dangerously tips to a side and she hurries to reach him, grabbing it just in time. He laughs: "Thank you".

"You know, though… I think I've lived near the sea before," she says, closing the door behind them. "It's the only thing that seems familiar."

"Might be, who knows," Ash comments with a shrug. "It's a start. Maybe your memory is starting to come back."

"Yeah, who knows," she repeats in a whisper. She looks down. "It's a feeling more than a memory. Maybe that's all it'll ever be."

Ash turns to her. "Well, you can stay here in the meantime," he says. "For as long as you want. I mean, unless you want to leave."

She shakes her head. "I don't want to leave, I like it here. It's just strange, not remembering anything."

It's strange to feel trapped between four walls, too, and safer out here, even if it's cold. She doesn't quite know how to explain that, though, and she stays silent, trying to keep the wind from blowing her hair in her face. Ash looks ahead and says "it's soon, you'll remember" and she says nothing, unconvinced still.

"It's odd, though, don't you think?" she asks instead, after a while.

He frowns a little. "What's odd?"

"You said that maybe I was on a ship that sank. I probably almost drowned. The sea should scare me, don't you think?"

"And it doesn't?"

Ondine shakes her head. "It makes me feel safe."

Ash frowns again, thoughtful. "Maybe you know it well," he says. "Maybe that the reason why you're still alive. Can you swim?"

She thinks of the surface of the water and for a moment she sees it open to take her in, break into a million fragments. Maybe she dreamed it. "I don't know," she says, slowly. "I think so."

"I bet you can," Ash says. "Who knows, maybe you grew up near the sea and you've been swimming your whole life, and that's why you didn't drown. Does that sound possible?"

She shrugs. "Maybe."

"Well, you were lucky anyway," he says. He turns to her and cracks a smile, and she can't help but smile back, not quite knowing why.

She looks at the sky. It's gray and close, swollen with clouds.

She feels stared at as they walk through the village. She looks around, nervous: someone whispers, looks away and abruptly falls silent as soon as she turns and then peeks again, a sideway glance. Uneasy, Ondine hurries her steps a little. Ash notices: "It's a small village, a new face is an event," he says, laughing. "Don't worry. They'll get used to you."

She turns back to the girls whispering, hands covering their mouths. "They make me feel weird."

"They'll find something else to talk about," Ash assures her, shrugging their voices away. She keeps her pace.

"Do you think I'm weird?"

Ash gives her a surprised look. "No, should I?"

"I don't know," she sighs. "I came out of nowhere. Can't remember anything. Maybe I am a bit weird."

"You came from the sea, not out of nowhere," Ash corrects her. "And you lost your memory. Nothing that weird about either thing."

Ondine smiles a little. "Maybe you're right."

They've almost reached the harbor. Brock is by the boats already; Ash waves hello, barely managing to keep the pile of baskets from collapsing again. Ondine laughs. "Want a hand?" she asks, as he strives to hold them. Ash shakes his head.

"I've got it!" he tells her, even if the pile still looks a little unsteady to her. She arches an eyebrow. "Alright."

Brock isn't alone. The harbor is crowded; men and boys busy themselves around the boats, someone rows off the shore, someone else, just back, pushes his boat to the beach. The sea is rougher than yesterday. Waves crash more aggressively against the sand and the rocks, raising higher spurts. Would I have drowned, had the sea been like this yesterday?, she wonders; and yet even now she can't see it as a threat.

"Hey, Brock!" Ash calls, as they reach him. He smiles, looking up. "You're late," he points out.

Ash puff his cheeks, setting the baskets down next to the boat. "Not by a lot, come on," he protests. Brock laughs.

"Alright, not by a lot," he says, then looks at her. "Good morning, Ondine. Nice to see you again."

"My pleasure," she smiles. Brock scoops up the baskets to place them on board, adjusts the oars. Ash turns to her.

"Do you want to come?"

"She'd bring you bad luck."

Ondine jumps, spinning around. The voice came from a brown-haired boy, about Ash's age, standing next to one of the boats with his hands on his hips and a smirk on his face. She frowns and shakes her head.

"Pardon?"

"A woman on board brings bad luck, everyone knows that," he says. He nods towards Ash. "Except this thick-head, obviously."

"Quit it, Gary," Ash grumbles. Ondine looks at him, puzzled.

"Why would I bring you bad luck?"

He shrugs. "You wouldn't, it's just a story."

"Oh, sure. You'll change your mind when you're at the bottom of the sea," Gary provokes him. "Who's that, the girl you fished?"

"I found her on the beach, I didn't _fish_ her," Ash retorts. Gary laughs.

"Ah, yes, that sounded too crazy even for you."

Ash puffs his cheeks again. "Don't you have anything to do?"

Gary pretends to think about it, then shrugs. "I do, but laughing at you is funnier."

Ondine looks at him. "Stop it," she cries out, frowning. Gary raises his eyebrows.

"Oh, she defends you, too?" he says, to Ash instead of her. "Just what you needed, a girl to protect you."

"Stop it!" she repeats. Ash doesn't rise to the bait.

"Ignore him, he'll get bored of it," he sighs, as Gary laughs some more. She shakes her head.

"Why do you let him treat you like this?"

"Because that's how he is," he says with another shrug, without turning. Brock sighs.

"Quit it, come on," he chimes in. Ash grumbles a "I didn't start it" and bends down to take off a boot, balancing on his other foot as Brock frees the boat from the wedges. He takes off the other too, throws it inside the boat, then looks back at her. "So, do you want to come?"

She shakes her head. "I don't want to bring you bad luck."

"Don't believe that, I told you, it's just a story," Ash repeats. She smiles.

"Yeah, but I'd only be a burden, I don't know anything about fishing," she says. Ash pouts for a second.

"Alright," he gives up. He glances at Gary from above his shoulder, then smiles at her again. "We're going, then. See you later."

She nods. "Later," she answers, and watches as she and Brock push the boat to the sea.

When she turns she meets Gary's eyes. He stares at her, arms crossed.

"Where did you come from?"

She shrugs a little. "I don't know. I can't remember," she answers. She hesitates, remaining silent for a moment, then adds: "Maybe my ship sank, or I fell into the sea."

Gary smirks, sarcastic. "Or maybe they threw you in it."

"What?"

"Who knows, maybe you're a thief or a delinquent and when they found out they took you and threw you off the ship," he provokes her. She frowns, shaking her head.

"I'm nothing like that."

Gary doesn't reply. "I wouldn't waste my time with Ash, if I were you," he says instead.

"He helped me," she snaps back. "And he's nice. Not like you."

He laughs. "Alright, keep following that loser around, then," he comments. Ondine scowls.

"Better than spending time with you," she retorts. She balls her fists. Gary keeps laughing and turns away, getting back to his boat.

Ondine keeps staring at him for a couple moments, then looks away. Ash and Brock's boat is a small dot now, she can barely see it. She loosens the angry grip of her fingers and raises a hand to keep the sun from her eyes, but she still can't see very well. She bites her lip. She lingers for a few more moments and then turns, to go back to a home that isn't hers.


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

Delia adjusted a dress for her, taking in the seams and shortening the too-long skirt. "It's an old dress of mine, it should fit you now," she says, handing it to her. Ondine puts it on, prudishly turning towards the wall even if Delia left her alone. Again, when she looks down, she finds herself unable to fully recognize what she's seeing, as if she ended up only by chance in this body with its thin legs, its narrow waists, its barely noticeable breasts: it doesn't feel hers, she's deaf to its mechanisms. She runs her fingers along the protuberance of her collar bones, the curve of a shoulder, imagining the tangle of bones and sinews under her skin.

The dress is made of blue cloth, a sea-blue, slightly worn out here and there but comfortable and warm. It fits almost perfectly. Yet she still feels clumsy under all that cloth, as if forced to wear some heavy, annoying harness. She has to watch her skirt when she walks.

She finds Delia in the garden. She looks up when she hears her and observes her for a moment before curling her lips in a smile.

"Does it fit you, yes?" she asks. "If it's still too big I can adjust it a bit more."

"It's perfect, thank you," Ondine assures her. She looks around, observing the patch of land and the rows of green springs. "Can I help?"

The woman thinks about it for a moment, brushing her brown hair away from her forehead with the back of her hand not to get dirt in it, then nods. "You can help me water them," she says. She points at something to her left. "There's a well there, can you see it? Fill a bucket and bring it here."

Ondine nods and hurries towards it. It takes her a while to figure out how to lower the bucket in the well; when she manages she leans over the stone border, trying to look down. She can't see the bucket, but she hears the liquid _thump_ when it hits the surface. She wonders how deep it is as she pulls it back up, scraping her palms against the rope.

She walks back to Delia with the bucket, careful not to spill it. "What should I do…?" she dares to ask after a moment, unsure.

Delia smiles and points at one of the rows. "You can water those. They're beets."

She nods again and crouches next to the springs. She tilts the bucket, watching as the soil dampens and turns darker: that's right, she tells herself, water is good. It cannot hurt.

"You're watering them too much," Delia gently points out. Ondine looks at the soil turned to murky sludge and feels her cheeks burn.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, lowering her head. Rather than scolding her, Delia crouches by her side and takes the bucket from her hands. "Look," she tells her, tilting it slightly to pour some water on one of the springs she still hadn't reached. "That's enough. Beets do need a lot of water, but not that much."

She hands the bucket back to her and stands, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Now you go on," she exhorts. Ondine hesitates, her eyes lowered on her hands.

"Why are you helping me?" she asks. "You don't know anything about me". She shakes her head, tightening her hands around the bucket, and in a whisper she adds: "Even I don't know anything about me."

Delia doesn't answer straight away. She walks around her first, and stops in front of her, on the other side of the beet row. She crouches again and places a hand on her cheek, to make her look up.

"I know you don't have anyone," she says. "I know you have no other place to go, for now, and that you're probably confused and scared. That's more than enough for me."

Ondine smiles, but only for a moment. She looks back down. Her hands, clutching the edge of the bucket, look delicate and white. Delia's is rough against her skin, hardened from working. "I could be anyone," she says, thinking back to Gary's words. "A delinquent, maybe. A thief."

The woman shakes her head. "I don't think you're anything like that," she says, then shrugs slightly. "And even if you were, you'd still need clothes and a bed to sleep in."

She dares to look up again and meet Delia's eyes, clear and immensely sweet. They look like Ash's, too, but lighter.

"Thank you."

Delia answers with a smile. "Go, now finish watering those beets," she says standing up. Ondine nods and tilts the bucket again, careful this time. Enough, not that much. Even if dry soil is strange to the touch, harsh like dust.

She brushes one of the springs with the tip of her fingers, wondering if she ever knew that beets need a lot of water but not that much, or how to tell them apart from the other rows of plants, with larger leaves, or longer, or a different green. Maybe she did and she forgot with everything else, even if her unskilled, too-smooth hands tell a different story. But her body seems to have forgotten how to wear clothes, too, or how not to feel her stomach crumple when she looks around and sees nothing but air. She doesn't know how to tells the things she doesn't remember apart from the ones she never knew.

Enough, not that much.

She runs out of water before she reaches the end of the row. She stands, adjusting her hair behind one ear, and walks back to the well to fill the bucket again.

—-

_no! Have you forgotten everything?_

—-

Wind blows the smell of the sea in her face. It's stinging and pleasant, and Ondine closes her eyes for a moment, letting it fill her chest in a long breath.

Standing on the edge of the rocks, only slightly off-balance, she looks down at the waves. Water sprays around her, dampening her feet and her dress. Yesterday Delia taught her the names of the plants growing in the garden and how to tell them apart now that it's winter and most of them have barely sprouted, and she nodded and tried her best to remember. She repeated their names to herself as she watered them, and then later, as she tried not to think about the walls smothering her.

She sighs, then crouches, leaning over to dunk a hand in the water. Under the surface she sees it become pale and wavery. She hesitates for a few moments, staring at her reflection until another wave breaks it up and drenches her skirt around her ankles; then she stands and takes off the damp dress, letting it fall on the rocks away from the water. She takes off her corset and petticoat, too; carefully places her shoes next to each other. Standing with the cold wind on her skin she shivers a little, lingering a bit longer, then breathes in and lets her legs push her forward, eyes shut tight.

The sea opens up to welcome her, icy cold and almost traumatizing, and for the briefest moment Ondine thinks that she won't be able to move and she'll drown, but it doesn't happen. Her mind doesn't remember how to swim, maybe, but her body does, the way muscles forever keep the memory of a motion once learned. She almost doesn't need to control them, they themselves know the way; and as she swims towards the bottom for the first time since she woke on the beach she stops feeling lost. She opens her eyes, feeling them sting a little, and slowly lets go some of the water she held in her chest, relaxing her lungs. Air bubbles run fast towards the surface.

Sunlight barely reaches her, fragmented and pale. The sea is quiet like a cathedral. It's also boundless, and wild, and stronger than anything, she feels it even now that the waves are small. Infinitely stronger than the bones and sinews that keep her together. It could sweep her away, push her under forever, until all air will be gone from her lungs and her chest will fill with water; but it won't, not to her. She's sure of it. It won't because she knows it, even if she cannot remember. She knows it since forever.

The song is stronger here. She feels it vibrate inside her, in her back and her belly, rushing like the waves.

She swims back up when her chest start hurting. The surface crumbles above her head and she catches her breath, wet hair sticking to her cheeks and her neck. She wipes it away from her face and looks around, feeling slightly bewildered: she's farther from the shore than she thought, but she's still not scared. She breathes in again, filling her lungs as much as she can, then dives in once more, and again it's as if the sea had arms and spread them to embrace her.

She stays underwater until her heartbeat hammers in her temples and her chest feels about to burst. It hurts, but at the same time it's also strangely pleasant. The sea is everywhere, it's the only existing thing. The sea is her. When she goes back up to breathe a million light dots dance in front of her eyes, and her body never felt more alive.

She's tired when she swims back to the shore, and confused, too, but it doesn't matter. She climbs the rock and for a couple more moments she looks at the horizon shivering and wrapping her arms around her body. Then she turns and puts her clothes back on, more unpleasant than ever on her wet skin. Her soaked hair drips on her neck, making her shiver harder.

Uncertain, she lingers on the rocks a little longer, wind blowing at the skirt Delia fixed for her. Then she walks back to the beach, careful not to slip. She thinks of the song of the sea as she walks, quietly humming it to herself.

She finds Ash and Brock at the harbor. She waves hello and Ash sees her and happily waves back, hopping up and down a couple times. Ondine smothers a small laugh against her palm as she reaches them.

Ash notices her wet hair and damp clothes. "What happened?" he asks, frowning. "You're soaked."

She shrugs a little. "You were right, I can swim," she answers. Ash stares at her for a moment, then shakes his head.

"You're crazy, you'll fall sick," he grumbles. He takes off his cape, that she had given back, and hands it to her again. "Put this on, come on."

Ondine laughs: "_You_'ll fall sick, if you keep letting me borrow it. I'm fine."

Not at all convinced, Ash puffs his cheeks and then reaches her and drapes it on her shoulders, stubbornly insisting when she tries to draw back. Ondine tries to fight him, then sighs and gives up, using a corner of it to wipe her hair.

"There," Ash says, satisfied. He smiles, then walks back to the boat. Less than a minute and he looks up again: "Did you remember something, then?"

She shakes her head and thinks of the sea closing around her like another skin. "Not yet. But for a while it felt as if I was about to."

"Maybe it's true, who knows," Ash comments, cheerful. Ondine nods, still thinking about the sea.

When she climbed the rocks, her skin still wet and wind blowing cold on her neck and her back, for a moment she felt as if she left something behind, some piece of herself, and she stupidly thought about going back to get it, but she didn't know what that could be.

Brock, that had until now been silent, coughs against the palm of his hand. Ondine turns to him, frowning.

"Are you alright?"

He nods. He's pale, she had not noticed before. "Yeah, I just caught a little cold," he assures her, with a smile.

"You've been coughing the whole day, though," Ash points out. "Maybe you should go home."

Brock laughs, weak. "I'm fine, don't worry."

Ash doesn't look convinced, but shrugs anyway, after looking at him for a moment. "Alright, if you say so."

They didn't catch a lot of fish this time, either. The baskets only hold a few fishes, most of them small. Ash leans over to unload them, blowing a strand of dark hair away from his forehead.

"You shouldn't really swim in this season, anyway," he tells her, standing up. "It doesn't take long for the weather to change. The waves could drag you away in a moment."

Ondine shrugs, looking at the horizon. "I'm not scared of the waves."

Ash doesn't answer immediately. He observes her for a moment, his eyebrows in a frown and his eyes darkened, then looks away. "Be careful, though," he says.

She blinks, surprised by the serious tone of his voice. "Alright," she answer, after a second. "I will."

Ash nods, then leans over to the boat again. By the time he's done and he turns to her again to ask if she wants to come to the marketplace the shadow has left his eyes.

—-

Two days later she finds him standing outside the house, hands balled into fists and his brow in a frown. He should be down at the harbor already, and Ondine walks closer, frowning a little herself. When she lays a hand on his arm he jumps as if he had not noticed her yet.

"Hey," Ondine calls, shaking her head. "Is everything alright? Something happened?"

Ash stays silent for a moment, as if trying to place his thoughts back together. Then sighs. "I was just told that Brock is ill."

"Oh!" she cries out, raising a hand to her lips. "How is he? Do you know anything?"

"Yeah, they say he'll be fine," Ash answers, but he's worried, she can feel it in his voice. He bites his lip, nervous. "I've been to his house, but his father told me he was resting."

Ondine squeezes his arm gently. "I'm sure they're right," she tries reassuring him. "He'll be fine."

"I hope so," he says in a whisper, and just for a moment his voice cracks, hitching. She keeps her hand on his arm a little longer, stroking it briefly before letting go.

Ash turns to look at her for the first time since she reached him, still chewing at his lip. She thinks he'll draw blood if he doesn't stop. "I'm alone, too," he realizes. "For the fishing, I mean."

She finds nothing to reply. Ash thinks about it for a few more moments. "Do you want to come?" he asks then.

Ondine blinks, surprised. "I'd bring you bad luck," she reminds him then, cracking a smile.

"What bad luck, Gary is an idiot," Ash retorts. "It's just a legend. It doesn't mean anything."

She hesitates for a moment. "Will you go anyway, even if I don't come?" she asks then. Ash shrugs.

"Well, yes, if we want to eat."

"And is it dangerous to go alone?"

He shrugs again. "It's always better not to be alone out at sea," he says, then smiles. "But if you don't want to come, well, I can't exactly drag you there!" he laughs, sounding a little forced, then walks around her to the house. Ondine follows him.

"I'm coming."

Ash stops and looks at her, frowning. "You don't have to."

"I don't want you to go alone," she retorts. Ash walks through the door.

"I've done it a few times before," he tells her. "I mean, a couple times, at most, but I can handle it!"

"I'm still coming," Ondine insists. Ash gives her a curious look and then shrugs.

"Alright," he gives up, crouching to scoop up the baskets. She sees the pile waver and leans over to grab the ones at the top, splitting it in two piles. Ash looks at her surprised, then laughs: "I said I can handle it."

"I still want to help," Ondine replies, walking back outside. Ash follows her and closes the door behind, leaning a shoulder against it.

"Alright, let's go then," he says. He's still smiling, but the curve of his lips strains a little at the corners, and she sees very well the worried shadow at the bottom of his eyes. She thinks about telling him again that Brock will be fine, but she'd be lying: she doesn't know. She hesitates and remains silent, lowering her eyes; when she raises them again Ash is looking ahead with tightened lips and a frowning brow. Uncertain, she almost lays a hand on his arm again but lets it fall before actually touching him.

She still feels stared at. No one's whispering this time, but she feels their glances sticking to her back. She turns to look from above her shoulder, glancing back, but nothing changes. Their eyes are still following her when she turns.

"I don't think they got used yet," she points out. "Maybe I should get used to being stared."

"Don't mind them," Ash says. Ondine looks at him.

"Thank you."

Ash turns, surprised. "For what?"

"You're treating me like a person," she sighs. "Not as if I'm weird."

"You're not weird," he replies. She smiles.

On the beach he stops for a moment, looking at the boats, then half-smiles and says "here we are". There's almost no one; most fishermen are out at sea already, and their boats are dots in the blue. Ash and Brock's is still on the beach, tilted slightly to one side and covered with a cloth. Ash takes it off when they reach it, setting the baskets down on the sand, and folds it to tuck it under one of the wooden seats.

"I don't know anything about fishing," Ondine reminds him, almost apologizing. "Or, well, maybe I do but I don't remember."

"You don't have to do anything, I'll handle it," Ash assures her. He checks the nets, focused, places the baskets on board, lays the oars on the seats. Attentive, Ondine observes his only-slightly unsure hands and wonders if he really has been out at sea alone before or if he said that only so she wouldn't feel obliged to follow, and is just repeating what he saw Brock do who knows how many times. She lays her baskets at the bottom of the boat, next to his.

Ash bends down to take his shoes off. "You should take off yours too," he tells her, and she does. He tucks his trousers up to his knees and then frees the boat from the wedges, making it tilt a little more.

It's heavy for him alone. When he lays his hands on the hull to push it towards the sea Ondine sees his muscles stretch in his shoulders and his neck, and his arms tremble a little with the struggle. She reaches him to help, quickly, and when she places her hands on the wood Ash turns and puffs his cheeks, a bit disgruntled. "I can do it myself," he says, lifting an arm to wipe sweat from his forehead. She hears a small shortness in his breath, and shrugs, pushing the boat with him.

"It's heavy, you might get hurt," she retorts, and his cheeks puff again, but he doesn't reply; so maybe it is really too heavy for him alone, after all.

Together they push the boat to the shore. Ondine feels the water dampening the edge of her skirt and pulls it up, cramming the cloth in her arms. Ash gives the boat another push, moving it more easily now, and the prow cuts the waves in two; under the surface the sand seems to move with their reflections. Water up to her shins, Ondine helps him push some more, until the keel no longer scrapes the sand and the boat starts floating, wobbling a little.

"You can get in," Ash tells her, his voice proud. She nods and climbs on board, struggling a little not to slip or throw the boat too off-balance. As she sits, adjusting her dress that got wet anyway, Ash gives one last push and then jumps in.

"Well, here we are," he comments. He takes the oars, placing them in the locks, then sits down and starts rowing. The boat starts moving, slow at first, then faster and faster; and Ondine listens to the rhythmic splashing of the water and smiles a little, wind blowing in her hair. Ash's hands on the oars are a young boy's hands, but a man's, too, because they know perfectly how to move. She catches herself looking at them, looking at the muscles in his arms tensing under his shirt with every stroke. Serious and focused, he doesn't seem to notice. He stares somewhere above her shoulder without looking at anything in particular.

There's silence, and the smells of the sea fills her chest. The shore is so far away it looks like another world entirely. Ondine closes her eyes for a moment, looking for the song of the sea, and smiles when she finds it. It's not as strong as she heard it underwater, but it's there still.

Ash leaves the oars and leans over to drop the anchor, then starts lowering the nets in the water.

"Can I help?" she asks. Ash shakes his head.

"I know how to do this," he assures her. She doesn't insist, observing.

When he's done, Ash looks at the surface for a moment; then stretches his arms above his head and sits back down. Ondine waits, then asks: "Now what?"

"Now we wait," he answers. He stretches again and leans his back to the prow, eyes half-closed.

Ondine doesn't reply. She's not worried she'll be bored; the song of the sea is enough to distract her.

"Are you and Brock close?" she asks after a while, her voice low, and she sees him tighten his lips in a thin line.

"Very. He's almost like an older brother."

She doesn't know what to say and stays silent for a moment, grasping the cloth of her skirt. "He'll be fine," she says then, feeling inadequate and clumsy. Ash doesn't answer.

Near the horizon, still far away from them, the sun shines so brightly on the waves it almost hurts to look at.

Ondine leans over the border, dipping her fingers in the water. Her fingertips turn quivery and blue-ish under the surface. She closes her eyes, and after a while she finds herself humming the waves' melody again, so quietly she almost doesn't hear it herself. The sea sings and its song speaks of infinite stories; and for a while she feels as if she knows them all.

When she opens her eyes again Ash is looking at her curiously. Embarrassed, she sits up and pulls her hand back, locking it with the other in her lap. Ash laughs: "You can keep doing that, if you want. It was nice."

She laughs too, hesitating a little. "Can you swim?" she asks then. He shrugs.

"I'm a fisherman. If I couldn't swim I'd be risking my life every day."

She tilts her head. "I feel… almost as if I come from the sea," she says, and then stops, looking for the right words. "I mean… I feel more at ease here than on land. Isn't that strange?"

"Maybe you've lived on a ship for a long time," Ash suggests.

"Maybe," she repeats, even if that doesn't really feel true. "Don't you ever feel that?"

He shakes his head. "I wouldn't say, no," he answers, after thinking about it for a moment. Ondine looks down.

Ash stays silent for a while. "My father died at sea," he says then. Her eyes snap back up, without her being able to find anything to reply.

"He was a fisherman," Ash sighs. "Like me. One day he took the boat when the sea was too rough and never came back."

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"His boat found its way back to shore, though," he goes on. He strokes one of the wooden boards, almost distractly, almost gently. "It was in bad shape, but Brock and I fixed it."

"Is it this one?" she asks. He nods.

"It happened years ago. I was nine."

"How old are you now?"

Ash looks away from the horizon, where his glance had wandered, and turns back to her. "Fourteen."

"I'm sorry," she says again. Ash shrugs just a little, stretching his lips in a smile.

"When you go out at sea you know it could happen, sooner or later."

"Is that why you told me to be careful?"

He nods. Ondine hesitates for a few seconds, then leans towards him and places one hand on his. Maybe on impulse, Ash clutches it tight for a moment before letting go.

Neither of them finds anything else to say. The boat jerks quietly with the waves. After a while Ondine closes her eyes again, humming the song one more time. She thinks of Ash's hand closing around hers, and in her mind the image merges with that of the sea, rebel and boundless.

Later he starts picking up the nets, careful. Suddenly he stops. "Oh my God," he cries out, then bursts into laughter: "Wow!"

"What?" she wants to know, leaning over to see. Ash keeps laughing and tells her "look!", nodding towards something.

The net is full of fishes. Many more than she saw in their baskets the other times, so many they make a pile taller than her knees inside the boat. She looks at them puzzled and amused as Ash scoops up the other nets, pulling even more out of the water.

"I never caught so much," he says. He laughs again, throwing his head back: "Bad luck my foot!"

His laugh has a beautiful sound. Ondine finds herself cackling as well as she helps him untangle the fish from the nets and placing it in the baskets: there's so much it barely fits, falling over the edges. "You need to come more often!" Ash tells her, trying with little success to keep it in place. "You bring the best of lucks!"

He places the nets at the tail of the boat and weighs the anchor to get back at the oars, going on about how he never saw so much fish in the same place in his whole life. She smiles, and her smile lasts the whole way back.

When they get near the beach Ash drops the oars and gets off the boat, and she does the same, not minding her dress soaking because she didn't care to pull it up. She helps him push the boat to the shore and then watches, putting her shoes back on, as he arranges nets and oars and wedges. She jumps a little when she hears Gary's voice: "How the hell did you catch all that?!"

"Thanks to her!" Ash says, proud, and she protests: "That's not true!"

"It is," he insists. He unloads one of the baskets and shoots Gary a triumphant look. "So, what were you saying, about bad luck?"

Gary keeps his mouth shut for a moment, clearly trying to think of something to retort, them brushes them off with a "bah" and walks back to his boat. Ash laughs and tries to stack the baskets in a pile, barely managing it due to how full they are. "Can you get those?" he asks, nodding to the remaining ones. "We're bringing some to the marketplace… and some to Brock," he adds, his eyes darkening for a moment. "He's got a big family. They could use some."

"Alright," she nods, and stoops down to help. Wind blows her hair back as she stands back up, full of the smell of the sea. It fills her chest with something she doesn't know how to call. And when Ash turns to look at her from above his shoulder and asks "ready?" she thinks that yes, maybe it's the wind doing that, but maybe it's him, too.


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

After talking to Brock—even if only briefly, because Brock didn't want him to catch his sickness, too—Ash looks calmer. The lines of his face are less tense, serene almost. She stood by as they talked, feeling a little out of place, and after a while one of Brock's little sisters walked closer and tugged at her skirt, asking if she was the girl that came from the sea. She said it as if it were something of a mystery, something magic, and she laughed and nodded. From the other side of the room Ash raised his voice to say that she must have spent so much time in the sea that even the fishes trust her.

"The fishes trust me?" she asks now, arching an eyebrow, as they walk back home. He lets out a half-laugh.

"I was just joking, don't be mad."

"I'm not mad," she replies. Ash smiles relieved.

"Good!"

Ondine looks ahead, thoughtful. "It sound like… a fairytale, or a story," she says.

Ash turns. "What does?"

She curls her lips in a slightly rueful smile. "A girl that came from the sea, that doesn't remember anything about her past, so familiar with the ocean that its inhabitants listen to her. It sounds like a story. It doesn't sound like something that could really happen."

"Well, and yet it looks like it did really happen," he comments, frowning a bit. He shrugs. "You'll remember everything soon and it won't sound so weird anymore."

"When?" Ondine retorts, lowering her eyes. He looks at her.

"Huh?"

"When will I remember? You keep saying that, but it's been days and I still don't."

It's been days of feeling like she's in the wrong place, too, she feels it under her skin, in her bones, in her chest when she turns too quickly and her breath hitches in her chest and she has to find something to cling to, heart hammering in her throat. She feels it when she wakes up at night, and in the dark she can't recognize herself under her blankets. Ash sighs and stops: "These things take time," he says, but the tone of his voice makes her think he's only guessing. "It'll be alright. You'll see."

"You don't know," she replies. Ash shrugs again.

"No, but I'm sure anyway," he says, and starts walking again. Ondine follows him. She felt happy earlier, on the boat with him. She still is, a little, but the sea's absence is a stab of pain in her stomach. The more she walks, the more her dress dries and the sand in her shoes scrapes her feet, the more that pain grows larger, until she feels as if she could double over and cry or throw up. It's not a real pain, not a physical one, but it still hurts, in a way she cannot explain.

But Ash smiles at her and for a while she forgets, her pain becomes a little smaller. She can't understand that, either.

Ash opens the door leaning a shoulder against it, a basket of fish in his arms, and stands aside to let her pass. "You coming?" he asks, when she hesitates. Ondine sighs a little, and walks inside with him.

—-

The sea is rough today. She knows it even without seeing it and without looking up at the gray sky; she feels the storm raging inside her. Standing next to the well, she leans on the stone border with slightly trembling knees. The song is impetuous and violent, she hears it even from here: a war cry more than a song.

She drops the bucket and runs out of the garden, so quick she keeps stepping on the hem of her dress. Ash is on the door, holding the baskets. He looks up surprised when he hears her.

"Are you going out at sea today too?" she asks as she reaches him, slightly out of breath, and he shrugs as if the answer was an obvious one.

"Of course, why wouldn't I?" he replies. Ondine bites her lip.

"You didn't tell me. I want to come."

Ash hesitates for a moment, looking at the sky. "With this weather it's better if you don't."

She shakes her head. "Why? Is it dangerous?"

"Well…" he starts, and then stops to think before going on: "…a little, especially if you're not used to it. But only a little, don't worry."

"You told me that it's better to not be alone at sea," she retorts. "If that's true when the sea is calm it must be even truer now."

He shrugs again. "It's just a passing storm," he tries to convince her, but there's a hint of uncertainity at the bottom of his voice. "It won't last long."

"I want to come," she insists. "I don't want you to go alone."

"I can handle it, don't worry," Ash replies, forcing a laugh out of his throat. He tries to walk around her and she follows.

"I want to come."

"I told you, I can handle it," he says again, puffing his cheeks. She keeps following him.

"What if it's not a passing storm? What if it gets worse instead of better?"

Ash turns. "Well, then I'll be happy that I didn't let you come."

"And I'll feel guilty for letting you go alone," Ondine retorts. When he doesn't answer she grabs his arm and tugs at it. "Ash."

"Nothing's gonna happen to me, don't worry!" he insists, stubborn. But that small uncertainty is still there. When your father didn't come back, she thinks, was that a passing storm too?, but she sinks her teeth into her lip without finding the courage to really say it. For a moment, like a sudden pang of pain, she sees waves swallowing him whole. She tightens her hand on his harm.

"I'm coming with you."

Ash sighs dramatically, then finally gives up. "Alright, come. But if you fall into the sea I'm leaving you there."

"I can swim," she says. She lets his arm go. "Thank you."

He answers with a disgruntled grumble. Ondine stays silent, trying not to let him see how relieved she is. The waves are growing taller, she feels them on her nerves, in her bones; water sprays high around the rocks. She still can't see it, but it's all in front of her eyes anyway.

When they get to the beach Ash looks around with his eyebrows in a frown and his lips pressed to a line. The sea is dark, swollen; the waves almost reach the boats. They're all on the shore this time. Ondine takes a step forward, wind blowing her hair in her eyes. It pierces through her clothes, making her shiver as the sea rises to crash on the sand.

Ash looks at her. "Changed your mind?" he asks. She shakes her head, brushing her hair away from her face. The wind pushes it back in a moment. Ash sighs, tense, and walks towards the boat.

"You'd better not go out with this weather, boy," someone says, as he takes off the cloth covering it. It's not Gary this time; it's a grown man, with wide shoulders and blonde hair. Ash forces his lips in a smile, without turning.

"I can handle a couple waves," he states, determined. The man shakes his head, picking up a bundle of nets.

"I'm telling you for your own good. You'll end up like your father," he comments, before walking away.

Ondine sees Ash's shoulders tense up abruptly, just for a moment. She thinks of something she could tell him and finds nothing. Ash throws the cloth inside the boat, his brow angry.

"Ash…" she tries, but she doesn't know how to go on. Ash gives her a quick look, the strained smile still frozen on his lips.

"It's alright," he assures her. She pretends to believe it.

Ash finishes readying the boat and lays his hands on the hull to push it. Ondine hurries to help him, taking her shoes off between steps. The waves soak her dress up to her knees before the prow has even reached the water. It's harder this time, because the sea keeps pushing back; Ash grunts from the struggle, trying to hold the boat straight as the waves toss it around. "Get in," he tells her, when the keel finally frees itself from the sand, and he has to hold it tight in place for her to manage to climb aboard. When he's sure she won't fall he lets go and gets in himself. Ondine sits down on one of the wooden seats, curling up a little in her dress drenched in seawater from calves to waist, and she sees that the planks of the hull left red marks on his palms.

"You'll be cold," Ash grumbles. He nods to the seat, placing the oars in the locks. "My cape should be down there somewhere. You can put it on if you want."

She shakes her head. "I'm good," she assures him. Ash sits down.

"Alright," he comments, unconvinced. "Hang on," he adds.

He's struggling this time: he has to grasp the oars tight to keep the sea from wrenching them away, and put more force in every stroke, leaning almost all of his weight on the oars every time he pushes forward. He's really just a young boy now. Ondine holds to the seat as the boat jerks under her body and hears the sea roaring. It could swallow them in a moment, shatter the frame of the boat and drag them under forever.

"It'll be over soon," Ash tells her, slightly out of breath. "You'll see."

She nods, as another wave shakes the boat so violently that for a moment she's not leaning on the seat anymore, and thinks that it won't. She brushes her now-wet hair away from her face again.

It takes a while to get far from the shore. When they finally manage Ash catches his breath, leaving the oars. He stands to drop the anchor and another jolt makes him sway.

"Careful," Ondine urges him. He smiles, spreading his feet a little to balance himself.

"I'm being careful," he retorts. He starts lowering the nets and more than once he has to grasp the border to keep from being tossed off. It takes longer than the other time, because the rough sea makes it harder; they keep hitching on the boat and the oars and Ash mutters some half curse, trying to free them. She almost holds her breath the whole time, ready to spring forward to catch him should she see him lean too off-balance, and lets it go in a sigh when he finally sits back down.

"See, it's all fine," Ash tells her, shrugging. "There's nothing to be scared of."

"I'm not scared," she replies. "I never get scared out in the ocean". And it's true, kind of, and yet her worry still weighs in her chest, making it a little hard to breathe. She's sure she'd be able to keep her head out of the water and not drown, should the waves turn the boat over; but there's Ash too, and she's not as sure that he'd be able to as well. But maybe if she stays ready to catch him she'll be able to hold both of them.

Ash looks at her for a moment and seems convinced enough. "Alright," he says, glancing away. He looks at the sea, one hand tightened on the border of the boat; the nervous grasp of his fingers on the wood betrays him a little. Ondine bites her lips. All around them the ocean is screaming; it tells stories of waves high enough to shadow the sun, of boats dragged under and shattered against the rocks. Maybe Ash's father's, too.

He doesn't seem to hear them. He stares at the horizon and the clouds thickening in the sky, darker than ever. When a higher wave makes the boat jerk so harshly that for a second Ondine is sure it'll capsize he grasps the border tighter, shivering.

"Maybe we should go back," she tries. Ash frowns, turning to look at her.

"It's still early, we probably haven't caught anything yet."

"I mean that maybe we should forget about it."

He shakes his head and laughs: "You wanted to come, it's a little late to change your mind now."

"I didn't change my mind, I'm happy I came," she retorts. Ash frowns again. "I want _you_ to change your mind and go back."

"Ahh, there's nothing to fear," he insists. "It'll be over soon, I told you."

But it doesn't look so, and the waves rise higher and higher. Ondine's feet feel frozen; when she looks down she sees they're almost entirely covered in water. She thinks about putting her shoes back on, but they're soaked too, like her dress. She pulls her knees close to her chest, trembling; the boat jolts so high her breath hitches in her lungs. Ash's clothes and hair are drenched too, but if he's cold he's trying his best not to show it, even if his hair is sticking to his cheeks in wet clumps and his shirt is almost see-through on his shoulders and arms. Another wave tosses them around, the boat tilting almost vertically before crashing back down. Ondine lets out a cry, grasping the seat tighter.

"Ash," she tries again, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. "Let's go back. Come on."

It takes longer for him to retort this time, and he doesn't sound as convinced. "Nah, come on, I'm sure it'll pass soon."

"It's getting worse!" she snaps. She shakes her head, looking at the water at the bottom of the boat. "We need to go back. We'll sink."

"We won't sink," Ash tries, but he can't look at her as he does, and when he finally raises his eyes to meet hers he can't pretend anymore. He bites his lip hard, almost drawing blood, then sighs. "Alright, alright. We're going back. Just let me get the nets back, yeah?"

"Yeah," she whispers. Ash stands and the boat jerks under his feet causing him to lose balance, enough for her to really spring to catch him. She doesn't need to, because at the very last moment Ash manages to grasp the border, and she sits back on the edge of her seat, ready to stand again. "Careful," she pleads, her voice trembling a little and her heart hammering in her chest. He gives a nervous laugh and says don't worry.

He can't pull the nets back, they're stuck somewhere. He tugs at them trying to free them, careful not to pull too hard not to tear the knits. He leans over a little more and a wave hits him, slapping his face and making him cough; the boat jumps more than ever. Ash leans farther, muttering a curse under his breath. Careful, she tries saying again, please be careful, but her words are now stuck at the bottom of her throat with her breath. Ash leans a knee against the border, to have both of his hands free, and then suddenly the sea swells and everything turns over.

Ondine doesn't even have the time to scream or find something to hold on to before she's flying. She tries anyway, both things, but her hands grasp nothing and her mouth and her chest fill with water when the sea closes up around her.

She fumbles back to the surface and coughs, hampered by her wet dress. She blinks, struggling to stay afloat as she tries to catch her breath, and makes out the upside-down boat. She can't see Ash, anywhere, and inside her body something crumples, tightening in a terrified bite. She looks around frantically searching for him, waves trying to push her under; then takes a breath and dives back down.

She still can't find him. She swims towards the boat with her heart throbbing in her temples, so loud it deafens her. A few more strokes and she sees him, and her relief is so sudden it runs through her like a shudder, but it doesn't last long: Ash's leg is caught in the net and he's trying desperately to free himself, tugging at it and attempting to swim towards the surface.

She reaches him as fast as she can and tugs at the knits herself, trying to tear them; they dig in her skin cutting her fingers and her palms. Ash struggles and only manages to make things worse, air escapes from his lips. She keeps jerking at the net, tries tugging with all her strength and using her teeth and something gives, a little, but she's starting to feel the need to breathe, her chest burns and her head throbs. She tries grasping his arm and pulling him up, but it doesn't work. Her vision wavers. She tries to resist and her throat fills with water.

She swims back up, quick, her chest hurting so badly she could scream; she catches her breath filling her lungs as much as she can. She dives again and swims back to him, thinking please, please, please. She tugs at the net not minding the burning lines it digs in her hands. When the knits tear, in the water stained with her blood, she grabs him by the waist and drags him up. His body is heavy and still. She breathes clutching him tight, holding his head out of the water.

"Ash," she pleads. She can't tell if he's breathing. He doesn't answer and doesn't open his eyes, his body abandoned in her arms. She holds him as tight as she can, scared that the waves might drag him away, burying her hurt fingers in his clothes. The sea tosses them around, screams its song in her head deafening her. She can't see the boat anymore. She looks around for the shore and sees it far away, out of reach.

A wave pushes them under. She resurfaces coughing, trying her best to hold his head up. She tries shaking him, calling his name, and still he doesn't wake. She has to make it or he'll drown, they both will. She starts swimming, holding him, even if his body is a dead weight dragging her to the bottom and her dress keeps getting in the way of her legs. She'd have to let Ash go to take it off. She breathes in, her chest about to burst, struggling not to let the sea push her under.

Hold on. Please hold on, keep breathing. The shore is still too far, he's too heavy. Her heart throbs in her back. "Hold on," she gasps, looking for every ounce of strength left. The waves push her back, higher than ever. In her arms Ash is still not moving. Hold on. Hold on. Keep breathing, please hold on, please hold on. She says it over and over in her mind as she gasps for air, the beach wavering in front of her eyes, the song roaring furiously and echoing in her temples and her belly and her bones.

You can't have him, sea. You can have everything else, even me, but not him. Not him. I won't let you have him.

When she finally feels the sand under her bare feet relief almost sweeps her away. But she can't give, not yet. Her chest hurting so badly that her eyes fill with tears, she grabs Ash by the waist and drags him out of the water. Her legs tremble, barely holding her. She stops when she's sure they're far enough from the shore and the waves and then collapses exhausted by his side, trying to catch her breath as her vision slowly clears. She's still clutching his shirt in her hand; she has to force her half-numb fingers to let go. She props herself up on her arms as soon as she stops feeling on the verge of passing out.

"Breathe," she pleads in a whisper, bringing a hand to his lips. "Please breathe". His breath, faint, brushes her palm.

Ondine lets out in a sob the weight she carried in her chest and then collapses on the sand again, her body worn out and sore, laying an arm around his unconscious shape. She can feel his chest rising and falling. She holds him close and rests her forehead against his shoulder, too tired to do anything else.

Not far from them the storm is still raging. Ondine lies next to Ash, shivering, and waits for him to wake up or for the sea to quiet. Little by little she manages to start breathing regularly again. Little by little, the furious hammering of her heart slows down, too, and her chest stops hurting. She still doesn't dare to move, though, because every bit of her body feels exhausted and empty, and she curls up a little, her fingers numb from the cold.

Ash coughs. His chest jerks under her arm. She sits up as he gasps for air and rolls to one side, coughing and vomiting seawater out of his chest. Ondine tightens a hand around his shoulder, not knowing if she's trying to hold him or just assuring herself that he's really there and really alive.

"Ash," she whispers. Her voice trembles still. He takes in an avid breath and immediately coughs it out again, and blinks a few times, as if struggling to see.

"Ondine," he manages to gasp in the end, his voice raspy and small. She tries to answer and all that comes out of her chest is a sob, as her eyes fill with tears. She lowers her head hoping he won't notice, even if it's probably too late, and bites her lips trying not to cry.

"What—" he tries to say, but he's forced to stop to cough again, spitting more water. Ondine strokes his shoulder and brushes sandy hair away from his face.

"Breathe," she tells him, soft. "It's alright. Just breathe."

He finally manages to stop coughing. He lets a few moments pass, to be sure, then props himself up on his elbow and looks around, confused. "What…?" he tries again, and stops once more, this time because he doesn't quite know what to ask. He shakes his head. "Did you bring me here…?" he asks in the end.

She nods. She gets up on her knees and wipes her eyes with her hand. He looks around again.

"The boat?"

"I think it sank," Ondine whispers. She sniffles and lowers her head again, looking and the sand sticking to her hands and her skirt and biting her lip hard enough to hurt. "Gary was right. I did bring you bad luck."

Another sob escapes from her throat as she talks. Ash stays silent for a moment.

"I would be dead if it weren't for you," he says then.

She looks up, a little. Ash tries to sit up and only barely manages to, his body still too weak. "I would have drowned," he says, slowly. "You didn't bring me bad luck. You saved my life."

Ondine wipes her eyes again. Then, without thinking, she leans over to him and hugs him tight, smothering one last sob against his shoulder.

He gives a surprised "hey", then tries a faint laugh, embarrassed, laying a hand on her back. Ondine holds him for a couple more moments and then lets go, almost abruptly.

"I'm sorry."

He smiles. It doesn't last long, though; he looks at the sea and his smile fades. Ondine lays a hand on his arm.

"I'm sorry about the boat."

Ash tries to smile again, not quite managing to. "Better the boat than us," he comments. His voice quivers a little, cracking on the last words.

She stays silent for a while, unable to find anything else to say. "Can you stand?" she asks then.

"Maybe," he replies. He tries, but his legs won't hold him. "I can do it," he insists anyway, trying again, and Ondine hurries to hold him.

"No, you can't," she retorts. She ducks to place his arm around her shoulders. "Here. You can lean on me."

Ash tries to protest, but he really can't. He has to lean all of his weight on her not to fall. She can barely stand too, but it doesn't matter, she can hold him for a little while; she'll rest later. She wraps her arm tightly around his back, whispering "here" again. Even so he can barely walk, and after not long his legs give in entirely and he falls to his knees. Ondine waits patiently for him to find the strength to stand again; then, slowly, one step at a time, she helps him towards the village. Behind them the sea still hasn't quieted. It screams louder than ever.


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

Delia is on the door, hands clasped on her chest, as if somehow she already knew or felt it. She runs to them as soon as she sees them.

"What happened?!" she asks, grasping Ash's other arm to help her hold him. Ondine looks down, unable to find the courage to answer.

Ash does it for her. "The boat sank," he grumbles, staring at his feet. He lets a moment pass, as Delia presses a hand to her mouth, then adds: "Ondine saved my life".

The woman takes in a sharp breath, then hugs him, holding as tight as she can. "I'm fine," he protests. She lets him go, but keeps holding his arm; she turns to Ondine and for a moment it looks as if she's going to hug her too. She just gives her shoulder a brief squeeze, though, then whispers "come" and helps her bring Ash inside, and she can't help but feel a huge surge of relief, because she isn't sure her legs would have held them both for another step.

She stands by, letting Delia taking care of Ash. She leans against the wall, trembling, and wraps her arms around her body trying to warm herself up. She's surprised when Delia comes back, holding a blanket and her nightgown in her arms.

"Take those wet clothes off," she tells her. She shakes her head slightly, her eyes glistening with tears, then leans over and really hugs her. She's soft and strong and warm. "Thank you," she whispers, before letting go.

She walks away again before she has the time to answer, wiping her eyes. Ondine hesitates for a moment, clutching the blanket.

She takes off her dress shivering harder than ever, and quickly puts on her dry nightgown. Cold still, she wraps herself in the blanket, huddling up until she stops trembling, and wipes her hair with an edge of cloth to keep it from dripping water on her neck.

She finds Ash buried in his bed. She lingers on the door a little, still holding her blanket around her shoulders, and he sees her and curves his lips in a tired smile.

"I haven't thanked you yet," he says. Ondine walks in and shakes her head.

"You don't have to thank me."

"I do," he retorts. He props herself up on his arms to sit. She hurries to reach him and lay a hand on his shoulder, trying to stop him.

"Rest," she scolds him. He shrugs.

"I'm fine," he says. Ondine sighs, then sits next to him, careful to leave some space between them. She draw her knees close to her chest, laying her back against the wall.

Ash looks at her. "How the hell did you do that?"

She frowns. "How did I do what?"

"Nobody could swim through a storm like that," he states, shaking his head. "And for so long, and dragging me as well. How did you do that?"

She blinks, puzzled, then shrugs. "I don't know. I didn't stop to think."

"You must be an incredible swimmer," he comments, with a half laugh. Then looks at her, more serious. "Well, thank you."

Ondine shrugs again, a little. "I'm sorry about the boat," she repeats then. He sighs, looking down.

"I'll build another one," he decides. "Well, not right now, but… yeah, I can always build another one."

She remains silent, hugging her knees a bit more, and thinks another one won't be your father's. She can't say it.

"If you hadn't been there I wouldn't be here to do it," Ash says. He smiles. He's pale as a sheet, and the lines of his face are strained, but his smile is still beautiful. Maybe even more now. Ondine smiles back, wrapping herself tighter in her blanket.

Delia walks back with two steamy bowls. "Here, I brought you something hot," she says.

Ondine places hers on her knees, laying her hands around it to warm then. Delia gently brushes Ash's shoulder.

"How are you feeling, honey?"

"I'm fine," he assures her again, scarfing down the soup in his bowl as if he hadn't eaten in a week. "I ju_f_t need some _f_leep and I'll be good a_f_ new."

"It was imprudent, going out with this weather," Delia scolds him, but she's too relieved to have him there to really be angry. She strokes his shoulder again. "Eat, and then get some rest."

She doesn't have to say it twice. Ash finishes emptying his bowl while she still isn't even halfway done with hers, then lies back down, tired. He smiles again when she turns to him.

When he falls asleep, later, Ondine sits listening to his breath. She thinks about the sea, boundless and strong and wild, and how it let her save him. It did not hurt her. It could have, but it let her reach the shore. And Ash is sleeping next to her, she sees his chest slowly rise and fall under the blankets he somehow managed to turn into a tangle. Maybe that's why still, somehow, she cannot feel fear.

—-

_this morning, 'round the cape at dawn, some travellers came into town _  
_with scraps for sale and the saddest songs _  
_and a book of pictures, leather-bound, that showed a whale with a tusk a meter long_

—-

She hears his steps before she sees him. When she looks up from the row of plants she sees his boots. "Hey," she calls out.

"Hey," Ash replies. He stoops down, investigating the beets. "Can I help?"

Ondine shakes her head: "I'm almost done". Distracted, for a moment she forgets that the water shouldn't be too much, and when she remembers she straightens the bucket abruptly. It won't stick, this water thing. She has to focus to keep it in mind.

Ash sighs a little, puffing his cheeks. He stands up, stretches his arms behind his back. He's restless, with nothing to do; he doesn't know how to fill up the day, can't sit down for longer than a couple minutes. He watches as she finishes watering the plants and wipes her hands on her skirt. When she looks up Ondine sees him thoughtfully biting at his lip. Finally he says: "I told Brock about the boat".

"Oh, you did?" she marvels. He's been putting it off for two days. Ash looks down, nervously running a hand through his already messy hair.

"Well, yeah, I couldn't really hide it forever. Someone else would've told him if I didn't."

Ondine stands, picking up the bucket. "And what did he say?"

"He got angry," Ash grumbles, gloomy. "And scolded me. He said I was imprudent."

"Can't really say he's wrong," Ondine sighs. Ash follows her to the well.

"He said that as soon as he feels better we can start building the new boat, though."

She puts the bucket down, then turns. "Good," she comments. "How is he, by the way?"

"Better," Ash answers. She smiles.

"See?"

Ash nods. Then sighs and leans against the border of the well, almost sitting on it, and looks up at the sky. It's clear today.

He doesn't look too thrilled at the perspective of building another boat, now that it's no longer just an idea. Ondine watches him tighten his hands around the stone and wonders if he really wants to go back to the sea. It's clear he's not happy, without the time he spent fishing and with so many empty hours he doesn't know how to fill weighing on his shoulders, but now he risked his life out there. As she sat listening to his breath the night after the storm Ondine found herself wondering if he had been still conscious to feel her dragging him towards the surface and know that maybe he would be saved or if he'd passed out before that, as she swam up to breathe, thinking he would die there.

As if guessing her thoughts, Ash turns to look at her. "Does it scare you now, the sea?" he asks, hesitating, struggling a little to push the words out.

Ondine shakes her head. "It never did. Not even then."

He answers with a "mmh", his lips pressed together. Then stands.

"I'm gonna go see if my mother needs something," he says. He smiles, but his smile looks definitely forced this time. For a moment she thinks she sees him shudder.

—-

She can't sleep. The sea is strange; it quieted to leave space to another song, a different one. But the same, too, at the same time. That strange difference bewilders her, keeps her from closing her eyes. She tries and finds them wide open again in a matter of moments. She stares at the wooden planks of the roof, uneasy. She turns to one side, presses her hands on her ears, but she feels it anyway, with her skin and her nerves rather than her head. She tries focusing on the noises coming from the house, closer; the light creakings of the roof, the wind slamming a window open, Ash breathing heavily and almost snoring. That odd song, though, far as it is, still manages to drown out everything else.

Ondine sits up, pushing her blanket away. She listens, her brow in a frown and her back tense. After a while she stands, shivering slightly in Delia's nightgown that she always has to be careful not to trip on, leaving her messy bed behind. She looks for her shoes and can't find them in the dark, can't remember where she left them.

Ash mumbles something in his sleep and she jumps. She stops looking for the shoes. The floor planks are warm under her feet.

She leans through the open window, wind blowing her hair on her face. She can't see the sea, from there, but the song is stronger and won't stop.

She hesitates, adjusting her hair behind one ear, then straightens her back, closing the window before turning away.

The door latch is heavy. She struggles to unlock it in silence. She jumps when the door creaks on the hinges—does it do that at day too?—and stands still for a moment, certain she woke Delia or Ash. But Ash keeps snoring, and she doesn't hear Delia push her blankets away and stand. She walks out on tiptoes, slowly closing the door behind her back.

The village looks different at night. She almost likes it, with the gossipers behind their locked doors. It looks like a nice place to live in.

Maybe it would be different if he had a story. If she weren't just the girl Ash found on the beach, if she had a past, something to tell who wants to know. Instead all she has is a rip in the middle of her body when she's far from the sea.

When she reaches the sea the rip starts healing. The borders match, stop hurting, and she can breathe again.

There's a light on the sea. It's far away, and at first Ondine mistakes it for the moon's reflection. But it's yellowish like the light of a torch, and slightly moving, as if the sea quietly tossed it around. She walks until the waves dampen her feet and the hem of her nightgown and narrows her eyes, trying to see better. The light is a dot near the horizon. It wobbles like the fishermen's boats, when she watched them from the shore.

She keeps looking, unsure. The song of the sea is still strange. She stands on tiptoes, eyes fixed on the swinging light, and suddenly she understand.

It's not the sea. It's voices, singing the same song. They can't come from there; it's too far. And yet they do.

As she listens it feels as if something inside her is awaking, like a tingling. As if it had been numb since she opened her eyes on the beach and now the blood had suddenly started rushing back, stinging like needles under her skin. It's not pleasant, it's scary, and on impulse Ondine takes a few steps back, tripping on the nightgown and barely managing to regain balance before she falls. She blinks, thinking for a moment that maybe she imagined everything, but the voices are still singing. The light is still there, maybe just slightly bigger. It's hard to tell.

Ondine takes another step back, not looking away, then turns and walks back to the village, fast, almost running. Her breath hitches at the bottom of her lungs. She doesn't know what she's running from or why, but that strange uneasiness sticks to her skin, squeezing in every crevice of her body. It doesn't go away even when she leaves the beach behind, and turning back she sees houses instead of the light on the sea.

She reaches Ash and Delia's house with a racing heart. The door is closed like she left it. She pushes it trying not to make any noise and closes it again, leaning her back on the wood. For a while she stays still, thinking about the voices.

They knew the sea's melody. Ash couldn't hear it, when she was on the boat with him. No one else seemed to.

But those voices did. They could recognize it and make it their own.

Like her.

—-

_well, I asked the man who showed it me, what is the name of this strange beast? _  
_he said its name translated roughly to he-who-easily-can-curve-himself-against-the-sky _  
_and I am without a word._

—-

The next morning the village is ridden with excited chattering. She can hear it from there, too, and she lingers on the door, frowning.

"What's happening?"

Ash shrugs. "Let's go find out," he replies, and before she can answer he grabs her wrist and tugs her forward, getting a surprised "hey!" out of her.

Most people are heading to the harbor, or coming back from there. When he notices, Ash strops for a moment, hesitating, then shakes his head a little as if to shrug some thought away and starts walking again, the lines of his face relaxing after having tensed up for a moment.

They find a crowd at the harbor. Ondine looks around, trying to spot the center of that turmoil of voices and colorful skirts: there's a knot of people near the shore, where the boats are docked. Ash sees it too, and tries to squeeze between the crowd, his hand still grasping her wrist. He realizes he still holding her right then and looks down at his hand, letting go with an embarrassed half laugh.

By the shore, she finally sees it when she manages to make her way through that forest of dresses and capes, is a boat. Not one like the fishermen's: it's big and made of shiny, carved dark wood, its prow long and tall, turning at some point into a figure that looks sometimes like a woman and sometimes like a snake. Ondine stares at it for a few moments, her brow in a frown, trying to decide which one is right. When she stretches a hand to touch it she feels the wood smooth like skin, warm from the sun. It looks like a woman now, but when she blinks she sees the long winding tail.

The hull is half covered by a curtain of colorful cloths, sewn together haphazardly and different in motif and craftsmanship: scrapes reminiscent of the brocades of a queen's gown lie next to bits of worn out felt and clippings of colorful, almost violent hues, held in place with large, inaccurate stitches. It should look like a mess, but somehow it's beautiful instead. All around, inside the boat and on the sand, are chests, crates, baskets, a few vases. People crowd all around them, pulling out cloths and bottles and jewels. A woman lays a handful of coins in the hand of a girl with hair of a color so impossible that Ondine blinks, wondering if she's seeing things: it's a dark blue, intense and shiny.

"Need something?"

She jumps. The voice came from a blonde girl, wearing a dress so bright red that everything around her looks pale by comparison. There's a pink flower in her hair, falling golden and soft halfway down her back, and her eyes are a deep water-green, the color of the sea in certain moments of the day. For a brief second she looks so familiar that she's certain she's seen her before, but before she can grasp it the memory sinks back at the bottom of her mind.

"Well?" the girl smirks, arching her eyebrows. "I asked if you need something."

Confused, Ondine shakes her head. She looks around again: the blue-haired girl drops the coins inside a vase and turns to another woman, showing her a crate of embroidered cloths. Next to her is a girl whose hair is just as strange: big pink curls fall on her shoulders, wiggling as she bends down to open a chest.

"Who are you?"

"We're merchants," the blonde girl answers. She looks at her strangely, as if seeing through her, and Ondines draws back a little, uneasy. "Looking for something? My sisters and I have it. We're the most _sensational_ you'll ever meet."

She turns before she can reply that she's not looking for anything, fishing something out of a crate. "A dress, maybe," she says, placing a bundle of sea-green cloth in her arms, shimmery as if made of waves. "Or maybe… what could a girl like you be looking for? A comb? Perfume? Jewels?"

She keeps cramming stuff in her arms as she talks, to the point that Ondine can barely hold it and has to be careful not to drop it, people all around bumping into her back and her shoulders. "I don't need any of these things," she tries, shaking her head, as the girl stoops down to get who knows what from a chest. "And I don't have any money."

The blonde girl stands back up. She looks at her for a moment, then takes the pile of cloth and objects from her arms, laying it somewhere. As the turns, for a moment Ondine notices a lantern behind her, hanging from the prow of the boat. She thinks of the light she saw on the sea and shudders, unwittingly taking a half step back. Before she can really think about it, though, the girl turns to her again and hands her a book.

"How about this?"

"I don't have any money," Ondine repeats. The girl looks at her, that puzzling smirk still on her lips.

"Why don't you take a look at it? You might like it," she insists, placing it in her hands. It's thick and heavy, smelling of damp paper. The cover is leather bound, held closed by an opaque lock that still shines a slight golden shine under the surface. It opens under her fingers with a soft click.

The pages are covered in words. Ondine traces them with a fingertip, frowning, trying to decipher the strange letters.

"I can't read it."

"It's an ancient language," the girl says. She walks around her, stopping behind her back, and turns the pages for her until she finds a picture.

She does't say anything, but for a moment Ondine feels something twisting inside her body, taking her breath away, and then a tingle like she felt last night when she heard the song. The picture, taking up two whole pages, only barely resembles something she's seen before: it looks like a woman, maybe, but her body is covered in scales like a fish, and from her waists winds a long silvery tail, twisting in coils on a corner of the paper. Her face too is only half human, and so are her hands, resembling the feet of some amphibian animal. The lines of the drawing are serpentine and liquid, almost alive, as if the fish tail were unraveling in front of her eyes or the scales were catching the sunlight like a thousand small mirrors.

When she looks up, struggling to take her eyes away, the blonde girl is still observing her with that unreadable smile. Her eyes shine.

"What's that…?" Ondine asks. She barely manages it, her voice stuck at the bottom of her chest. She looks down at the picture again.

"There isn't a word for it in your language," the girl says. Her voice suddenly seems to come from far away. "Maybe you've heard about mermaids, the women of the sea."

She shakes her head, looking at the picture still.

"It's just a legend, but legends always have some truth to them. It is said that mermaids have the face of a woman and the tail of a fish, and that their voices can bewitch the sailors. Those are fairy tales, but there's who swears to have seen them. Just for a moment, before they disappeared between the waves, moving so gracefully it's like they're made of the sea itself, and able to sing the song of the ocean."

Ondine stares at the pages and feels her legs wobble. The girl's words dig into her body like heavy blows. She swallows, then slams the book closed, lifting a cloud of dust.

"I don't have any money, I said," she insists, her voice a trembling whisper. She hands the book back, dropping it in the girl's hands like it burned her, then draws back and turns to get away from the crowd, almost running. She catches her breath leaning her hands on her knees, the beach spinning around her. She sees the silvery shine of the scales behind her eyelids and something plunges deep in her stomach, her knees feel about to give.

"Hey," a hand brushes her shoulder, and she jumps before she recognizes Ash's voice. "Are you alright? I thought you saw something interesting."

She shakes her head. When she looks back, trying to peer between the crowd, the blonde girl is showing a pearl necklace to some women, smiling a bright smile. The book is nowhere to be seen.

"N-no, I…" she starts, stammering, then stops and swallows before trying again: "I don't like those girls."

"They're weird," Ash agrees, with a slight wince. "Have you seen their hair?"

Before she can answer, she hears Gary's voice among the chattering. "Well, look who's there. I heard you drowned."

Ash rolls his eyes and turns. "Hi, Gary," he sighs.

"Hi, loser," he replies. "What does it feel like, having sent your only way to make a living to hell?"

"It's none of your business," Ash grumbles. He looks down, staring at his feet.

Gary turns to her. "And you. I didn't think you'd have the guts to show your face around again," he says with a grin.

Ondine frowns. "Why?"

"And to think I had warned you, about bad luck," Gary sighs, in a fakely stricken tone. "This idiot brings a woman out at sea and ends up sinking. I hope you don't still think I wasn't right."

"Ondine saved my life," Ash retorts, taking a half step forward. Ondine sees him ball his hands into fists. "I would have died if it weren't for her, that's not bad luck."

Gary laughs, waving his hands in the air. "Oh, save your breath. I'm not the one who started this, everyone's talking about the sea girl's curse, are you telling me you didn't hear anything? You're lucky everyone's too distracted to notice her right now."

Ondine takes the blows in silence, lowering her head. She bites her lip hard, feeling her eyes sting. Ash lays a hand on her arm.

"Don't listen," he tells her. "It's not true. Gary talks crap all the time," he raises his voice, so he'll hear as well.

"It's true the boat sank while I was there," she replies. Ash shrugs.

"If it had sank while you weren't I would have drowned," he says. He tugs at her arm a little. "Come. If there's nothing interesting here we can go back."

She follows, still looking at the sand, her eyes still burning. Behind them comes Gary's voice again: "You're lucky to be alive," he says. He sounds a bit different now, less aggressive, maybe, less bold. "Both of you, but you especially, Ash, from what I've heard. Don't take that for granted. You might not be as lucky the next time. Think about it."

Ash stops for a moment, then starts walking again. She waits for someone to point at her and scream it's her, it's the girl Ash brought out at sea, the bad-luck girl, the curse. It doesn't happen, but she still doesn't dare to look up. Ash tries to distract her: "Don't listen. Gary, he's… he talks out of his ass all the time, he likes to tease people to get a reaction. Sometimes he takes things too far, but he's not…" he makes a vague gesture with his hand. "I think he's not really like that, you know? I think deep down he actually cares about people, sort of. Don't mind him."

She isn't really listening. She thinks again of the picture she saw on the blonde girl's book, and a shiver runs down her back. If she closes her eyes she sees it again, as if every line on the paper was burned into her eyelids.


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

_he says, "my lady looks perturbed" _  
_(the light is in your eyes, Colleen)_

—-

When she lifts the bucket, her heart jumps so suddenly in her chest that she almost screams, and she has to press her hand to her mouth to make sure the cry won't escape her lips.

Lying between the bucket and the well is the book she saw yesterday. Quickly, without thinking, she tucks it in the small space between the well and the stone wall around the garden and then stands, turning to make sure Delia didn't see anything. As she lowers the bucket in the well her hands tremble so badly that the rope keeps slipping from her fingers.

Later, while Delia is at the market, she walks back to the garden and slips the book out of its hiding place, hands shaking still. Bent over near the wall, she opens it as her heart hammers in her temples and quickly turns the gibberish-covered pages, looking for the picture. When she finally finds it something inside her crumples again, the rip in her chest suddenly tearing more than ever. For the briefest moment something surfaces in her mind. The colors on the paper are bright, intense; the fish-tailed creature looks at her with a sideway glance, her hair a sunset-orange waterfall. She can't quite make out the eyes, shadowed. The silvery scales shine like the reflection of the sun near the horizon.

Maybe you've heard about mermaids, the women of the sea.

Ondine closes the book, after staring at it for who knows how long. She slips it back near the wall and stands, leaning on the stone. Her head is full of voices, but she can't make them out: they're like ghosts, vague out of focus shapes, disgregating when she tries to look at them directly but lingering still, like the spots left in your eyes when you look at a light for too long. Blinking won't make them go away.

"Are you alright?"

She nods even if she isn't sure, barely managing not to jump. She turns, still grasping the edge of the well. Ash frowns.

"Are you sure? You're pale."

Ondine nods again. She looks down. "I think I remember something," she whispers, her voice quivering on the last syllables.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" he says. Not replying, Ondine stares at her feet. Only after a while she manages to answer: "I'm not sure".

Ash walks closer. "Why? Did you remember something bad?"

She shakes her head. "No. I didn't really… remember anything clearly, it's just…"

She stops. Ash waits. "Just what?" he exhorts her, when she doesn't go on.

"It's strange," Ondine replies. "My head is full of all these things and I can't… I can't understand them, they don't even make sense. It's just a lot of chaos."

"Well, but you're just starting to remember, it'll be clearer soon," Ash tries. She bites her lip.

"I still don't like it in the meantime."

"When did it start?"

"Yesterday." She doesn't have to think about it. "When we went down at the harbor. When you asked me if I was alright."

Ash frowns. "Did you know those girls? Or maybe you knew some object they were selling?"

"No," she answers, but then stops and corrects herself: "Maybe. I don't know. For a moment I thought one of them looked familiar, but it was only a moment, and then…"

She looks down again, thinking about the book. About the lines on the paper, almost alive. For a moment it's as if she could feel its physical presence behind the well, like a sudden pang of pain.

"Then?" Ash wants to know. Ondine keeps staring at the ground.

"I don't know." A whisper.

Ash hesitates for a moment. "Maybe you should rest a little," he says then. She shrugs slightly.

"Maybe," she replies, not quite thinking it would help. Ash gently places a hand on her arm, as if saying come. Ondine follows him for a couple steps, then halts.

"Wait."

He gives her a surprised look. "What?"

"I'll show you something," she says. Her heart races as she turns. She walks back to the well and kneels to take the book from its hiding. Ash follows, crouching behind her.

"What's that?"

"Somebody left it here for me to find," Ondine tells him. She brushes the cover with her fingertips and for a moment it feels alive under her touch. "It's what one of those girls was showing to me yesterday. It was weird, she seemed to really want me to see it, like… like she was expecting some reaction. I don't know why."

"What's it about?" Ash asks. Ondine shrugs and opens it at a random point, showing him two pages covered in strange symbols.

"I can't read it."

"Then why show it to you?"

She bites her lip and turns the pages, stopping on the fish-tailed woman. "She wanted me to see this."

Ash leans over a bit more to see better, leaning his chest against her shoulder, and observes the drawing for a handful of moments. She can feel him breathe. Finally he shrugs and straightens his back, puzzled. "I don't understand. What's that supposed to be?"

Ondine turns and leans her back against the wall, sitting on the ground. She clutches the book to her chest. "She told me about these creatures. She said there isn't a word for them in our language, but there are legends about mermaids. They're creatures of the sea."

Ash looks at her, without saying anything. She swallows.

"They can move gracefully in the water and they can sing like the ocean," she finishes, and for some reason she feels a strange pain as she does, as if something stung her, a pang of longing for something she doesn't remember. Ash keeps looking at her. Then he shakes his head a little, frowning eyebrows and a confused look on his face, and sits next to her. Ondine turns, trying out a smile that doesn't quite come out right.

"Do you believe in legends?"

"Well, I know someone who can move extremely gracefully in the water, for sure." he replies, then looks away, to nothing in particular.

"Would you go back?" he asks after a handful of moments. "If… if somehow you were one of those creatures, I mean. Would you leave and go back to the sea?"

She doesn't answer immediately. She thinks about the pain she feels when she leaves the sea behind, the whispers behind her back in the village, Gary talking about bad luck. Dry soil sticking to her hands, lingering black under her fingernails, annoying. She keeps brushing them on her skirt for hours even after having washed them.

"This is not my place," she replies, looking down.

Ash doesn't reply. When she looks back at him, Ondine sees a shadow darkening his eyes. Would you want me to stay?, she thinks, without finding the courage to say it out loud, and he stands and lets out a bitter sigh.

"It's just stories," he says, sharp, without looking at her; the sound of something breaking. It's like he's telling it to himself. "They're not true."

But legends always have some truth to them.

Ondine tightens her hands around the leather-bound cover, looking at him. She thinks about his breath, when she lied next to him on the beach and nothing else mattered more than that. Would you stop me, if I were to go? Would you try to convince me to stay?

Would that be enough?

"Maybe they are," she retorts. "How do you know what's just a story and what isn't? You— you don't even know me. No one here does."

Ash gives her a funny look, frowning a little. "I do know you."

"Not really," she replies, shaking her head. "I'm the girl you found on the beach. That's it, that's the whole story. And you keep saying that it's enough, even if I don't remember anything else, but maybe it's not. Not for me."

"What does this have to do with—" he looks for the word "those mermaids, or whatever?"

"I don't _know_," she snaps. Something in her chest is burning. "I don't know anything, that's the whole point. I don't even know if this is me or… just a story about me you all made up. I can't tell."

She sees it unravel in front of her eyes. The girl on the beach, without a past; a narrative she doesn't feel like she fits into, weighing on her like her name and her clothes, all wrong or at least not-quite-right, shaped around her while she had no choice to make, because it's hard to choose anything when you don't know yourself.

Ash shrugs his shoulders, not understanding. "So... what? You still don't remember, right? What else would you do?"

"I don't know," she repeats. She looks away, hurting.

For a while there's silence. "So you'd go?" Ash asks in the end. He's not looking at her either, his eyes scanning the garden. She shrugs, that new fire still burning.

"Maybe I should. Who wants me here after all? Gary, all those people from the village. They'd be happier if I was gone."

"I— " he starts. Then stops, dropping whatever he was about to say. "...They don't really want you gone. And I told you about Gary, didn't I? You just... have to look past all the crap he says."

She clutches her book. "Maybe I don't care to."

(Would that be enough...?)

Ash doesn't say anything. He keeps looking away, his hands tightening into fists for a moment. Tell me you'd stop me, she thinks, feeling those words boil in her chest. Tell me you'd care enough to try at least. But he doesn't, and her not-quite-yet rage just keeps seething inside her, unnamed still. It chokes her, burning her lips from the inside.

They remain in silence, the space between them suddenly wide.

—-

_have you come, then, to rescue me?_

—-

At night she hears the sea calling her. She tries to ignore it, pressing her hands on her ears, and for a while it works; but the call creeps under her skin. It echoes in her bones like drums. She turns on her back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling while inside her a storm rages.

Finally she stands, her breath racing and shallow. She lingers by her bed for a few moments, arms wrapped around herself; then, slowly, she takes off Delia's nightgown and gets dressed, careful not to make noise. She puts on her corset, her dress, her shoes; for a moment she holds an edge of Ash's cape, that he left hanging from a hook near her bed as if it were hers now, then leaves it. She hesitates a while still, not quite knowing what to do, then walks to the door and stops with her hands already on the latch. She swallows, a weight in her throat. She turns back and on tiptoes she walks to Ash's bed.

In the moonlight she watches him sleep, his blanket tangled around his waist and his arms spread across the bed. His breath is calm and quiet for once. She draws closer, jumping every time the floorboards creak under her feet, and gently readjusts his blankets. As she leans over him for a moment she thinks of leaving a kiss on his forehead, among the messy strands of black hair. But she bites her lips, and doesn't.

Something aches in her chest as she straightens her back and turns away. She walks back to the door without looking back and frees it from the latch.

The night air is cold and stinging. She shivers and sinks her head into her shoulders, closing the door behind. Silently, she waves a goodbye (forever?) to Ash and Delia, and the house that welcomed her.

As she walks through the garden, again she feels the presence of the book, like a needle on her skin. She thinks about taking it with her, but she doesn't need to. Those strange words are following her anyway, twisting in her mind like the coils of a snake, in search of their meaning.

When she leaves the village the call becomes stronger. It's not only the sea: the voices she heard two nights ago merge with the waves, singing the same song. Those voice came from the sea too, she's suddenly sure of it. There's no other way they could know its melody so well.

She hears them more clearly when she gets to the beach. The merchants' boat stands out majestic among those of the fishermen, casting a gray shadow on the shimmery sand. The moonlight traces its shape and for a moment, not longer than a blink, it looks different. Withered, crumbling, a clump of gray rags in place of the colorful curtains. Did she dream that? The hull is shiny again, the cloth multicolored, the prow towering lean and proud. She walks closer, cautious, and again she recognizes the shape of a woman in the wood, and then the coils of a snake. The empty eyes seem to follow her for a second.

The song comes from behind her. She turns: three silhouettes sit on the rocks, gleaming in the moonlight. They're the ones singing. When she walks closer, her breath stuck in her lungs, she recognizes the loud colors of their hair and their clothes.

"I knew you would come," says the blonde girl, leaning forward and resting her chin on her hands. The song stops. "Even if I was starting to fear that you wouldn't be here in time."

Ondine shakes her head, confused. "In time?"

Without replying, the girl stands and walks towards her. "Did you like my gift?" she asks, adjusting her golden hair behind one shoulder.

"The book?" Ondine replies. She shakes her head again. "I don't understand. What do you want?"

The girl smirks, not saying anything. Behind her, the blue-haired one stretches on the rocks, as if trying to get more comfortable between the blankets of a bed. The cloth of her dress, a bright green, creases around her body.

"Do you not remember anything?" she says. She looks like the blonde girl: she has the same chin, the same cheekbones, the same nose. The same smirk on her lips. "Do you not feel anything when you're close to the sea? When you walk away from it?" The other one, with sunset-pink hair, smothers a laugh against her palm. "Do you not feel out of place inside a house, wearing that dress?"

Ondine bites her lip, hard enough to hurt. She wraps her arms around herself: inside her body something is screaming or awaking. The blonde girl walks closer and lays a hand on her shoulder, leaning over to whisper in her ear: "No? And yet I though you'd have remembered by now, _little sister_."

It's as if with those two words something suddenly wedged, violently flew back in place. She still cannot see the full picture, but the splinter are sharp edged and vivid, trying to cut into her skin. For a moment she almost screams _stop_, make it stop, but she knows it wouldn't.

The blonde girl moves behind her and covers her eyes with her hands. When she takes them back it's as if she could see through the outlines: she still sees the other two girls sitting on the rocks, and the bright, almost aggressive colors of their clothes; and yes she recognizes different shapes at the same time, fish tails coiling on the rocks and bodies covered in silvery scales, wet hair sticking to bare shoulders like seaweed. And the boat is really a wreckage, a ghost ship, dead gray planks barely holding together and colorless rags, pale and shapeless like they've been underwater forever, holding their lost treasures.

When she blinks the outline become solid again. The boat is shiny wood, the tails turned to dresses. She turns and for a brief moment the blonde girl's eyes hold something different, too, something wild, something nonhuman under the surface.

"What—" it takes her a while to find her voice again, her words choking her. "What… how can this be…?"

Daisy—now she knows that's her name, as if she always knew, as if her name had been waiting inside her under a thin layer of sand and a wave suddenly swept it away—grabs her by the shoulders and makes her spin. "Many things are possible," she says. Out of the corner of her eye Ondine sees her nodding towards the village, barely there in the dark of the night. "Many more than these small creatures without magic could ever imagine."

She rests her chin on her shoulder. In front of her the other two are girls again, yet now the trick doesn't look quite as real: the outlines look frail, fragmented in places, as if now that she saw things for what they really are it were easier to find the glitches.

"Not everything you see is real. Some things are but illusions."

Ondine shakes her head. "But I saw you out of the water. You're out of the water right now. How could it be if it's just an illusion?"

"Illusions don't necessarily only trick the sight," Daisy replies. "Think of it like a costume, if you will. Something that masquerades your true shape. It's not what you really are, but it looks real, until you take it off."

She still can't understand. The fog in her head has started thinning, but some of it still lingers thick. She swallows.

"Did you come to save me?"

Daisy bursts into laughter. "To save you? From what, _Ondine_?" she scoffs, using the name that was never hers, isn't, will never be. "You came here on your own will. Look at you: you dried yourself, you wore a corset, a dress, shoes. You look almost like one of them."

"I'm not one of them," she retorts. But she thinks about Ash, and Delia, and her voice cracks a little before she gets to the end of the sentence. Daisy tightens her hands on her shoulders.

"Then come back," she blows next to her ear. "You wanted to come. You thought you'd be happy here, that these humans would welcome you, that you'd be just like them. That you'd be better off if you ran. But it was never like that, was it? Did you ever feel like this was your place? Did you ever stop missing the sea?"

She looks down, teeth sinking in her lip harder. The back of her eyes sting.

"Come back," Daisy whispers. "Come home with us. We can break the spell that turned you into a human. Ours is just an illusion, it won't last long, but you… you gave up your magic to become this. Without us you'll be trapped in this body forever."

Part of her wants to say yes, and it pushes so strongly she almost doubles over from the pain of it. Part of her wants nothing more than to dissolve in the waves as if her human body had been nothing but a dream; part of her wants to scream yes, please, bring me back home. It's a big part, almost all of her. And yet there's something else. A tiny corner of her head and chest that screams even louder.

"Well?" Daisy loses her patience. "Is that what you want? Stay here until you'll get old and die without ever really seeing the sea again?"

She cannot answer. Lily, the pink-haired girl, laughs and gracefully jumps down from the rocks, walking closer.

"She fell in love," she says. She smiles, sour. "Our little sister fell in love. With a human. Isn't that so?"

"I'm not—"

"That doesn't mean there's something for her there," Daisy snaps, interrupting her. Her hands grasp her shoulders like claws. "You could be here a thousand years and this still wouldn't be your home. And your beloved… he'll probably be scared of you, when he finds out what you are. Or disgusted. Humans are stupid creatures. What they don't understand repulses them."

"Ash is not like that! He's different," she retorts, sharp. Daisy laughs.

"Look at how passionately she defends him. You're right after all, she really is in love." She lets her go and walks around her, stopping in front of her. She shakes her head, with a cruel fondness. "It's not worth it. Would you forget yourself, give everything up, all for a human boy that won't ever understand what you are?"

Her chest feels like a stone. It's not that, she would answer, it's not _just_ that, but it's only a half-born thought still, not quite free from the fog of her mind. Daisy grabs her by the arm, trying to drag her with them, and she hesitates and then follows. In front of them the sea seems to open, longing, welcoming, calling her home.

"Ondine!"

She jumps, turning back. Ash runs to them, stopping to catch his breath. Angered, Daisy tugs harder at her arm, trying to drag her away; but this time she fights back.

"Ondine," Ash says again. He looks at her and then at her sisters, confused. "What's happening?"

She looks away. "My name's not Ondine," she replies, sharper than she meant to, and then regrets her tone a moment later. Ash remains silent for a moment, taken aback, then walks closer.

"I woke up and you were nowhere to be found," he says. "What's happening? Where are you going?"

Tears burn trapped in her eyelashes. She looks up; before she can find anything to say, though, Daisy jerks at her arm again, almost making her lose balance.

"Come," she hisses. She shakes her head, fighting still.

"Wait," she replies. In her chest something feels like a tearing. "Not yet."

She frees her arm from her sister's grip. Daisy looks at her, her eyes sparkling with rage.

"Our illusion won't last for long. If you don't come back with us tonight, you never will."

"Then I won't," she snaps. Saying it is like a punch in her gut, it makes her stagger. And yet somehow it feels… not _right_, not quite, but _better_. Fitting somehow. "I won't, if it has to be like this. Go back without me."

Ash lays a hand on her arm, soft. "What's happening?" he asks again. She turns to him, barely seeing him through her tears.

"They weren't legends," she tells him. "They weren't just stories, it's all true. But I don't want to go yet."

Not like this, not without being able to explain. Not leaving more hurt behind. Not passively admitting that she was wrong, that her sisters were always right, that she cannot be her own person away from them.

Not without choosing, again, not bowing her head and accepting her fate. She'll choose, painful as it might be.

Her whole life she's been in her older sisters' shadow, until she ran away and lost herself. She won't make the same mistake now that she remembered who she is. She made a choice once, and it left her bruised and hurting, but it was hers. She'll decide if it was the wrong one, not them.

Not them.

"Enough of this nonsense," Daisy snaps. She grabs her again while Lily takes her other arm and the third, Violet, stands to reach them. "You're coming home with us whether you want it or not."

She tries to break free, but the three of them together are strong enough to drag her away. Ash tries to stop them.

"Let her go!"

"Ash," she calls. Daisy buries her nails in her skin, hurting her.

"He won't help you," she hisses. "He won't come to get you back, he won't dare to. The sea scares him. Doesn't it?"

Ash's hands tighten to trembling fists. But he does stop when he reaches the shore: he looks at the water with wide eyes and she sees that yes, he's scared. For a moment she sees him again with his leg stuck in the net, as she cut her fingers to try to get him out, and she knows he's seeing that too. Daisy laughs as water soaks her dress first to her knees and then to her waist, and the sea rises in a wave, the highest she's ever seen, and suddenly the illusion gives and her sisters are mermaids, or not-quite mermaid, creatures of the ocean with no human word to call them, silvery scales shining under the surface of the water. They pull her down, down, and she feels her own body start to give, too, stripped of the magic that held it together, her sisters' magic stronger than her will.

She tries to fight, to not let the sea swallow her, but her sisters' hands pull at her dress, her arms, her hair. She opens her mouth to scream—not like this, not yet, I don't want it like this—and water fills her throat and her chest as her heart throbs. Only a few more moments and she won't be able to fight anymore, she will become water too.

The song of the sea is stronger than anything.

Then arms grab her by the waist and pull her up. The surface opens up above her head and she coughs and splutters and sobs, clinging to Ash's shirt.

"Go, quick!" he tells her, helping her climb the rocks. She stumbles over her dress, coughing, as Ash tries to push her out of the water. Her fingernails break as she grasps the rocks with every ounce of her strength. She turns to help him climb too, and Ash takes her hand, but before he can haul himself out of the sea the waves swell and boil, full of her sisters' furious song, and slam into him, throwing his body against the rocks.

"Ash!" she cries out. She holds his hand tighter, trying not to let it slip away. Water almost swallows her and the rocks whole. She manages not to let go, her fingers digging into the skin of his wrist. When the wave draws back he coughs and groans in pain. She sees the sea swell up again and quickly she grabs him by the waist, her dress tearing under her knees, and pulls him up before the waves can crush him again.

"Are you alright?" she asks, holding him tight.

She feels him nod. The sea boils again and again rises to hit them. She hugs him as tight as she can, as if her small, breakable human body were enough to protect him from the fury of the ocean.

"Stop it!" she shouts, against his shoulder, rage swelling red in her words. "I won't come back! Not like this! Let _me_ choose for once!"

The sea is calling her, tugging at every bit of her body and her mind. But with her real name and her memory something else awoke in her; something storming, something burning, tired of letting her story be written by someone that's not her.

"I'll choose this time! I'll stay!"

The waves scream their rage one more time, then suddenly falls quiet. She looks at them trembling, waiting for them to rise again at any moment with enough strength to drag them under, where Ash will drown and she'll become once again what she ran from. But the sea remains calm. The moon, low, shines on the surface flat as a mirror.

They understood.

She lets Ash go, slowly. "Are you alright?" she asks again, her voice shaking. "Are you hurt?"

He shakes his head. "Just a couple bruises, I think," he says. He looks at her frowning, as if seeing her for the first time.

"Are you actually a mermaid?"

"I was," she whispers, and tears overflow her eyes again as soon as she looks down at the sudden realization of what she lost. But not lost, maybe—not all of it. She can't go back to the sea, but she still hears the call, still feels her bond. That was never lost, not even when she forgot herself.

Ash gently lays a hand on her cheek, brushing wet hair away.

"Why didn't you want to go back?"

She bites her lip, and finally she tells him everything, all at once: "I wasn't happy there. My sisters, they always thought they knew what was best for me, and I always wanted to get away. That's why I left, now I remember. I forgot, but now I remember. I wanted to be myself for once, finally. So I used a spell, an ancient magic that can only be used once, and I gave up my tail for this body. That's how I came here. And maybe it was stupid, but at least it was _me_, and I don't know if I'll be happy here either but I can try, and—"

Hesitating for a moment, she looks up again, and attempts a tearful smile.

"...and you're such an _idiot_, taking the boat with a storm like that and all! How am I supposed to leave you?"_  
_

He blinks. Half laughing, half sobbing, she leans her forehead against his chest. "I'm staying," she says again. He remains still for a moment and then wraps his arms around her in a clumsy, inexperienced, sudden hug. "I'm staying."

Ash waits for her to stop crying, his hands stroking her back. "What's your name?" he asks then.

She looks up and wipes her eyes with her hand, sniffling. "Misty."

He smiles. "It's a nice name," he says. "Fits you better than Ondine."

Misty manages to smile back again, her eyes still wet. She rests her head on his chest again and he hugs her once more, burying his face in her hair. They stay like that for a while, and all around them the sea keeps singing.

_**end.**_

_A/N:_ well, that was it. I hope you enjoyed this story! Me, I would actually have changed a few things as I translated it (I wrote it a couple years ago), namely about "Ondine"'s characterization, but it would probably have involved rewriting a good half of the story, so in the end I left it be and only reworded some things here and there.  
A few notes:  
- I kind of made up my own mermaid lore, borrowing from different depictions and tales of mermaids and selkies.  
- There are a few reasons why I picked the name Ondine for Misty: it fit, ondines being a sort of mermaids and whatnot; it's actually her name in the French version of the anime (as petites sorcieres also pointed out in a review); it's a homage to one of my favorite movies, _Ondine_ by director Neil Jordan, about a modern day fisherman who finds a woman in his net. Ondine is the name she gives herself. Lastly, I liked that it sounded vaguely like the "Colleen" from the song.  
- Speaking of her name, I don't know if it's actually noticeable, but she's never called that when she's in the water (when she goes for a swim and when she rescues Ash). It was an attempt to reflect the fact that she's the closest to her true self in those scenes. Anyway, finally getting to use her actual name in that last line was the most satisfying thing _ever_.  
- I don't actually know anything at all about fishing. Or boats. It probably shows.

Thank you for reading and reviewing! And sorry for the occasional terrible English. I'm still learning (and apparently I have huge issues spotting typos in my own writing).


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